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00:00Many television presenters today claim they're going on a journey.
00:26It usually turns out to be metaphorical.
00:28But I really am going on a journey, back to a lost era of rail travel, when trains had character, style and names.
00:38I've got a suitcase, a proper piece of luggage to be used in conjunction with a luggage rack.
00:46Some useful books to read, and a jigsaw, if I can get a table.
00:51Around 350 named trains have come, and mostly gone, in this country.
00:59My aim is to find out why we once named trains, and why we don't do so anymore.
01:05I'm interested in three in particular.
01:08That definitive North-South Express, the Flying Scotsman.
01:12The raffish Brighton Bell.
01:14And the hugely romantic Cornish Riviera Express.
01:22All three connected with their passengers in a way that would be unthinkable today.
01:28I mean they had fans.
01:35By travelling on the surviving remnants of those three famous named trains, we'll learn something
01:41about rail travel in the past, and how it compares with that of today.
01:46If you're wondering about the suit, by the way, and I'm rather wondering about it myself,
01:54it's because my first train will be taking me to the Riviera.
01:58The English Riviera, that is.
02:00My first journey begins among the cheerful bustle of a holiday crowd.
02:20About 500 of these people are here to catch the same named train that I am, though they
02:25might not know it.
02:27Because the once-famous beacon of glamour has lost some of its cachet.
02:34I'm at Paddington Station to catch the Cornish Riviera Express to Penzance.
02:41The train dates from 1904, making it a very early example of a named train.
02:46And it still exists.
02:47But whereas the Edwardian version would have been widely blazoned in the publicity of the
02:51old Great Western Railway, the modern one is a bit more muted.
02:56But there it is, CR, standing for Cornish Riviera, and denoting the 1006 for Penzance.
03:03Today, there is the normal scrimmage around the departure boards, because no-one here yet
03:16knows from which platform the train will leave.
03:18I'm one step ahead, however.
03:19A guidebook produced in 1924 for people travelling to the Cornish Riviera begins, no need to ask
03:25which platform for the Cornish Riviera Express.
03:31It's number one every time.
03:36Platform one was always the pre-eminent platform for this station, reserved for the important
03:41trains.
03:42Today, the three-faceted clock is masked by scaffolding, the filigreed ironwork skewered
03:48with pigeon spikes.
03:50But as I wait, I can imagine what it was like in the glory days.
03:54The tang of coal in the air.
03:57The steam from recently departed trains billowing lazily under the footbridge.
04:01The clatter of milk churns at the country end of the platform.
04:05And here, on platform one, the Cornish Riviera Express.
04:09A departure on it, bringing a tingle akin to leaving on a long-haul flight today.
04:16Being a small boy mad about trains and ships and planes, my ambition was to go all the
04:22way to Penzance on the Riviera.
04:25And it finally happened in 1959, when I was age 12.
04:32I was at boarding school in Norwich at the time, and we were on our way to scout camp in
04:38West Cornwall.
04:43And what I remember distinctly was the station announcer.
04:47Platform 8, that's a demotion.
05:00Serves me right for having a guidebook that's 90 years old.
05:04Platform 8 is on the other side of the station.
05:07I'm carrying my own bag.
05:09In Edwardian times, I would have been assisted by one of the half million porters who worked
05:13on the railways.
05:14And other details have changed.
05:16In the days of steam, the name would have been announced by a roof board on the top of
05:22the carriage.
05:23Here, today, we must make do with a window label.
05:26But there's the name.
05:27The Cornish Riviera.
05:29Well, most of the name.
05:31The word express is not fashionable these days.
05:34By the way, tip for rich people.
05:37Yellow means first class.
05:39As a VIP service, the Riviera would have been seen off every day by the station master.
05:53Today, there is no station master, but a station manager.
05:58And he's too busy, probably monitoring sales environments, to come and see me off.
06:05Our train is an intercity 125, the diesel-powered workhorse of the modern rail network.
06:13There's standard class, but I'm in first.
06:17Well, in its early days, the Riviera was all first class.
06:22And I'm attempting authenticity.
06:24Cornwall, then, was regarded as a place for wealthy people who had time to spend,
06:34to go and enjoy the landscape.
06:37People who were well-educated.
06:40Certainly not in the early days, the bucket and spade thing.
06:47Despite the upmarket character of the train, it was named in a surprisingly democratic way.
06:54The Cornish Riviera Express was named by the staging of a competition in the railway magazine.
07:01The prize would be three guineas, and the promise that the winners would achieve immortality as the namers of the train.
07:09I need hardly, therefore, mention those two immortals, Mr. J.R. Shelley of Hackney and Mr. F. Hyman of Hampstead.
07:18The intention was to draw attention to a new express service to Cornwall, whose first leg was a sensational 245-mile non-stop run to Plymouth.
07:28The idea was also to draw attention to Cornwall, a far less familiar destination to most Edwardians than Paris.
07:37Some people said the GWR stood for the great way round, as all their trains to the West Country, including the early Riviera, used to go via Bristol.
07:51In 1906, the company created a more direct route, bringing the journey down to about seven hours, as against just over five today.
08:00For some people, of course, the longer the journey, the better.
08:04Well, for me, the thing to do was just to be looking out of the window the whole time, first to get the numbers of all the other trains going by.
08:15It was just going to a different place, different scenery. So there was always something to look at.
08:21The Great Western Railway produced numerous books to help the passenger enjoy the experience of travelling down to Cornwall.
08:31This was one of them, Through the Window. It's about the scenery.
08:36The book, which dates from 1924, suggested that, on the way out of London, passengers should look out for such lineside highlights as the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum,
08:46the Maypole Margarine Factory, and an interesting double line of telegraph poles near Twyford.
08:52What you got with this Through the Window book was that it gave all sorts of perspectives in terms of travelling by train.
09:01The idea was it was very much a part of the entire process. We're not just looking out of the window.
09:08The idea is you look out of the window with purpose.
09:15To what purpose at this point in the journey? I'm not sure.
09:20We've stopped at Reading, which the old Cornish Riviera Express wouldn't have touched with a barge pole.
09:27After Reading, standard class is even busier. I begin to smell frying bacon. Most of the named trains served food.
09:36In steam days on the Cornish Riviera, the manager of the restaurant car would have walked the length of the train,
09:43tinkling a little bell somewhere around Exeter, and inviting people to take their places for lunch.
09:49The tradition of on-train dining has been nobly maintained by the current operator,
09:55although it has been modified slightly.
09:59And it has been complicated. There is the buffet, a trolley, and it turns out that the first-class carriage I'm sitting in
10:08can become, according to demand, a dining car.
10:12Sir, would you like tea or coffee?
10:14Er, coffee, please.
10:15Would you like milk with that?
10:16Yes.
10:17Thank you very much.
10:22I fancy kedgery. Eggs and fish, the principal ingredients, are staples of train dining, being quick to cook.
10:33But it's brunch, not lunch, and still less is it luncheon, as served on the old Riviera.
10:41In a thriller of 1939 called The Cornish Riviera Mystery, the two principals are asked by the waiter on reaching the dining car.
10:50Usual lunch, gentlemen? What is the usual lunch?
10:54Tomato soup, sole and fried potatoes, apple tart and cream.
10:59I think that will do. Don't you?
11:07Lunch in the 30s would have cost about four shillings.
11:10For some reason, the GWR boasted that this was less than half the price of lunch on the Canadian Pacific Railway.
11:16Still too pricey for some, though.
11:18We were a bunch of schoolboy scouts with our packed lunches in greaseproof paper, I suppose.
11:27So we certainly didn't have the money to go into the dining car.
11:30But I think some of us would have sneaked up just to look over the tops of the chairs to see how the other half lived.
11:37And I certainly remember looking into the dining car and being very impressed.
11:43The tables had tablecloths and nice, comfortable seating.
11:48It was all done in style.
11:50But let's not get too romantic about the old days of the dining cars.
11:57OK, there's no monogram on this cutlery anymore saying Great Western Railway, but that was only ever there to stop you nicking it.
12:05And the great days of the dining cars also coincided with a time when wages were low on the railways.
12:13And all these attendants and waiters milling so helpfully around, they were earning very little and dependent on tips.
12:20When rail wages began to rise in the 1960s, that was the beginning of the end of the really luxurious era of on-train dining.
12:34Nobody wants to bring back railway serfdom.
12:37But it's a shame that almost all the dining cars in Britain have disappeared.
12:41True, they didn't make a profit.
12:44But they generated great goodwill.
12:47And they're such a civilised way to pass the time.
12:54The scenery is about to get going.
12:57From the left side of the train I glimpse as travellers for a hundred years have glimpsed.
13:01The white horse on the hill at Westbury, though the town now rather gets in the way.
13:07About 20 miles later we go through Taunton.
13:10Here the old train would have slipped a carriage.
13:13That is, a carriage, the end one obviously, would have been uncoupled from the moving train.
13:18But in 1960 along came those two gents, Mr. Health and Mr. Safety, and slipping stopped.
13:24A brief stop at Exeter, then we're in Devon.
13:28Glorious Devon, as the guidebook has it.
13:30But my fellow passengers are rather taking its glories for granted.
13:35They're engaged in the usual selection of portable pursuits.
13:43I've brought one particularly relevant to this train.
13:47This jigsaw dates from 1929.
13:50It's one of more than 80 produced by the Great Western Railway Publicity Department.
13:54No other railway made more than three jigsaws.
13:56Its costs would have been two and six, so that's quite clever.
13:59Make the public pay for your own propaganda.
14:02The jigsaws typically showed the territory of the Great Western Railway.
14:05And they had titles like Exeter Cathedral.
14:08King Arthur on Dartmoor.
14:10The Vikings landing at St Ives.
14:12And the jigsaws also promoted the trains, and this is one of those.
14:17In fact, this train.
14:19The Cornish Riviera Express barrelling along by the sea.
14:22Three pieces missing.
14:35Well, it was bought cheap on eBay.
14:37The scene on this puzzle is the number one railway view in Britain, widely reproduced in different ways.
14:46It was famous to children and smokers.
14:51This is a cigarette card.
14:53The location is Dawlish on the Devon coast, where train and sea meet in thrilling conjunction, the track being practically on the beach.
15:03For over a hundred years, the trains have upstaged the sea, as people watch the trains snake through the red cliffs of the Dawlish Warren.
15:12The railway author, Benedict Levet, describes this as being like a needle threading through gathered cloth.
15:25With the Devon coast behind us, we're about halfway through our journey, time-wise.
15:32We have travelled 225 miles from London, and we're just 80 miles away from Penzance.
15:37Some of the best views lie ahead, and an exciting railway moment.
15:43This is Plymouth. It's our fourth stop, but on the original Riviera, it would have been the first stop.
15:50The rail enthusiast, or railway act, in the late 1920s, they were often vicars, would maybe have walked along to the front to see a bit of exciting business.
16:00The heavy locomotive, say a king-class, would have been taken off, and a smaller one, say a castle-class, was put on, because the king would have been too heavy to cross the Tamar Bridge that's coming up.
16:12The king locos weighed in at 89 tons, whereas the slightly smaller castle-class were 79 tons.
16:26Not much lighter the first-timer over the bridge might have been thinking, with ten carriages, that was still over 500 tons of train, tiptoeing its way towards the rather delicate Royal Albert Bridge.
16:43You'd finally got to Plymouth, you'd gone past the dockyard, and then there was this wonderful, iconic bridge, which you could see out of the window of the train.
16:54This was 1959, before the road bridge was built.
16:57So there, there's just this single bridge, famous bridge, built in 1859, and the wonderful river.
17:09And the other side, this fabled land called Cornwall.
17:13The more imaginative sort of Edwardian, coming to Cornwall for the first time on this train, might have experienced a twinge of apprehension.
17:28The GWR's guidebooks to the region, after all, were called holiday haunts.
17:33The accent was on a dash of adventure.
17:37Granite crosses, stone circles, white witches, the evil eye, smugglers, ghosts.
17:49Through an enticing combination of legend, history and romance, the GWR was packaging Cornwall as an upper-middle-class holiday destination.
17:57They offered Riviera passengers intellectual as well as physical pleasures.
18:03Now, out of England, into Cornwall.
18:07You will find exhilaration in the surf that breaks and drags on the Atlantic shores.
18:12You will find the sun's magic on the sands of the west.
18:16If this were the only magic, if these were the only mysteries, they would be enough.
18:21But this is only the edge of the land, and this is only the fringe of the mystery.
18:32So the ancient land was sold very heavily, and being the Great Western, their argument was that if you want to study our ancient Celtic land, Cornwall is the best place possible.
18:45There could not have been a Cornish Riviera Express without the concept of the Cornish Riviera.
18:56This was a GWR invention.
18:59To remind their wealthy passengers of Nice, they planted palm trees on platforms.
19:07Altering geography to suit their purpose, the company made out that Cornwall and Italy were more or less interchangeable,
19:12even down to having the same weather.
19:16One was meant to perceive it as something effectively continental.
19:22So you've got wonderful expressions like,
19:25in time to come, Mullion will become a Monte Carlo,
19:29and Pansans would be as Naples.
19:33Whatever you can say about Mullion, it'll never be Monte Carlo.
19:38In some ways, Cornwall is another land.
19:44From Liscard down, some of the line is still controlled by semaphore signals,
19:50of the kind used when the first Cornish Riviera steamed through.
19:53Operations at Lost Withiel station might be of interest to students of Victorian railway history.
20:07For over 100 years, local signalmen have been under instruction to give the Cornish Riviera Express a clear run.
20:21But it's impossible to be a proper express on the Cornish main line.
20:40Because today, as in the early days of travel, it's cluttered with country stations.
20:45The old Riviera deigned to stop at some of them.
20:53Our more democratic service stops at even more.
21:01I'm reminded of a quote from Evelyn Waugh about travelling through France.
21:05My train was a rapide, and, God, it was slow.
21:10Ladies and gentlemen, our next station is stopped at about 315 minutes time.
21:13It will be Truro.
21:14It is a very windy line all through Cornwall, so you've never got the chance to go fast.
21:26So you can just sit back and absorb the scenery, which is constantly changing.
21:32Although the modern train is hours ahead of where the old one would have been at this point,
21:36this final leg seems to take an age.
21:40We're averaging less than 60 miles an hour.
21:43But in the home stretch, the Cornish landscape musters its grand finale,
21:48and you wish the train would go slower.
21:53Coming towards Penzance, the author of Through the Window goes into overdrive.
21:57While approaching Marazion, we have caught a glimpse of that almost incredible sight when seen for the first time.
22:04St Michael's Mount, towering up from Mounts Bay.
22:08We feel the whole journey would have been worthwhile if it gave us no more than this.
22:13Just coming into Penzance, it's about ten past three.
22:29The original Cornish Riviera Express would have got in at about five o'clock,
22:33so not that much of a difference.
22:35But then we stopped more.
22:37Ladies and gentlemen, this service terminates here.
22:39You can take all of your luggage and problems with you.
22:43Penzance is the final destination.
22:47Penzance is journey's end for me.
22:50As for the travellers of the past,
22:53I imagine them setting off with the whole of the delightful duchy at their disposal.
22:58Exploring Land's End, painting the continental vistas,
23:02and finding the Atlantic to be so very like the Med,
23:04and generally doing what the railway company have suggested they do.
23:10The Cornish Riviera Express did a favour to Cornwall,
23:13because it brought people with bulging wallets into the region
23:17at a time when its traditional industries of mineral mining and China clay mining
23:22were going into decline.
23:25For many visitors, the GWR propaganda turned out to be true.
23:29The landscape was stunning and ancient.
23:35Unfamiliar flowers thrived and palm trees flourished.
23:40The visitor to the famous Murrab Gardens might have thought,
23:44on a good day, that the exoticism was genuine,
23:47not something invented in an office at Paddington.
23:50Named trains like the Cornish Riviera were particularly popular between the 20s and the 40s,
24:05when the railways were in the hands of competing private companies.
24:11Their flair and style disguised the bottom line,
24:15which was about making money in a very competitive environment.
24:18My next train was the showpiece of another company,
24:23the London and Northeastern Railway,
24:25and this train's fame eclipsed even that of the Cornish Riviera Express.
24:30It's the flying stuntman, eager to be on her way to repeat history.
24:38I rendezvous with it at a suitably distinguished point of departure.
24:42I'm at the Balmoral Hotel Edinburgh, known to older guests as the North British,
24:56after the railway company that built it.
24:58The same company built that, Edinburgh Waverley Station,
25:03which looks rather like a garden centre from up here.
25:08I'm in town to catch the flying Scotsman,
25:11the pride of the East Coast Main Line,
25:14the flagship of the London and Northeastern Railway.
25:18And look, still here on the timetable today.
25:23F-S. Well, you don't need much bigging up when you're the most famous train in the world.
25:32The train, now very big apart from the web,
25:36is the O540 flying Scotsman service to London King's Cross.
25:40Scotland and Newcastle, London King's Cross.
25:45The current train is run by the new operators of the East Coast Main Line, Stagecoach and Virgin.
25:51They've kept the name.
25:53Imagine how much more boring that would look without the words flying Scotsman.
25:57Our train has an actual locomotive on the front, a rarity today.
26:04A loco of this type, Class 91,
26:07holds the current British speed record of 161 miles an hour,
26:11which makes it a fitting engine to pull this train.
26:14By the way, it is the train I'm talking about,
26:17not the steam locomotive that was also called the Flying Scotsman.
26:23Sometimes lightning struck for train spotters,
26:25and the Flying Scotsman train was hauled by the Flying Scotsman locomotive.
26:31But not always.
26:33Apart from a brief interruption a few years back,
26:36the name of this train has survived since 1924.
26:40Traditionally, the Flying Scotsman went both ways, up and down in railway turns,
26:46leaving King's Cross in London and Edinburgh Waverley at the civilized time of 10am.
26:52Today, the Scotsman is one way only, to London,
26:57and it leaves Waverley at the challenging, for some of us, time of 0540.
27:09Its early departure time reflects its purpose,
27:12to compete with domestic airlines for the business market.
27:15This echoes the older Flying Scotsman, many of whose passengers would have been travelling for business.
27:22The suit's not quite right, I know, but I'm trying to imagine myself as an Edinburgh solicitor on a business trip in about 1930.
27:32The firm's paying, and come to think of it, I'm a senior partner, so of course I'm in first class.
27:37First class would have been businessmen going down to London or up to Edinburgh.
27:46It would have been quite a splendid journey, but probably a pause in your working life if you're a businessman,
27:53between, say, seeing the banking insurance people down in London and maybe some of the shipping people,
27:58and going up and seeing whichever industry you were in, you know, chemicals, steel, shipbuilding,
28:05whatever it was that was keeping you in Edinburgh.
28:08The 30s journey would have taken all day, and that day was to be enjoyed,
28:16with perhaps a little thinking about business.
28:19Things are quite different now.
28:21The interwar Scotsman would have reached its destination just nicely in time for the end of the working day,
28:28about five o'clock.
28:30This train will get to King's Cross at 9.40, in time for the beginning of the working day.
28:34The business climate of today is much more frenetic, and although it's only 5.45am,
28:42most people on this train are already working.
28:48The airline-style at-seat breakfast promotes a working rather than a leisure environment.
28:55And this train is like a plane, really, in that it will ignore all the stations between Edinburgh and London except Newcastle.
29:01But back in 1928, the Scotsman began doing this run from London to Edinburgh non-stop.
29:09A sensational feat for a steam train, and the USP of the Flying Scotsman.
29:15And on board the early non-stop runs, it boasted services that would be unimaginable on any British train today.
29:22Services you were offered on the non-stop.
29:26If you're first class, of course, you've got your own dining car, Louis XVI style, very comfortable seats.
29:32You also had people who came through the train offered in newspapers.
29:36If you're a lady, there was a lady's retiring room, there was a hairdresser, they offered things like vibrant massage.
29:44For a while, the Flying Scotsman boasted a cinema carriage, a barber, a cocktail bar that served the Flying Scotsman cocktail.
29:59Whiskey, vermouth, Angostura bitters, sugar and ice. Apparently, it could have felled a horse.
30:09The cocktail persisted, but the barber didn't. Probably just as well in view of his cutthroat razor.
30:15Basically, he was a publicity stunt. And we ought to ask, why was this train trying so hard?
30:25The answer, to stave off the competition. To detour into a bit of railway history.
30:31In the interwar years, Britain's trains were run by four private companies.
30:36The Southern, the GWR, the London Midland and Scottish, and the London and North Eastern Railway, owners of the Scotsman.
30:43And of the four, the LNER was the least well-off, so they had to be particularly canny in the fight for customers.
30:50The Flying Scotsman train arose from competition between two of the companies of the big four.
30:57The London Midland and Scottish on the west coast route, and the London and North Eastern Railway here on the east coast route.
31:06You could get from London to most places in Scotland by either company, so they were locked in a competition for speed.
31:14We can think of these two routes as like two drag racing tracks.
31:20The LMS's expresses pounding up the west coast, the LNER's up the east.
31:25And if you had a fast train in those days, you were jolly well going to give it a name.
31:29As for the theme of those names, well, it was enough to turn anyone Republican.
31:34The Coronation, the Coronation Scot, the Royal Scot, the Silver Jubilee.
31:41It was the Flying Scotsman that was the star performer.
31:45This was partly because the LNER was better at self-promotion.
31:55They made sure everyone knew their flagship named train was fast by staging dramatic events.
32:00For instance, in 1931, the Scotsman supposedly raced a dark speedboat and a de Havilland Puss Moth, a plane with a top speed of 124 miles an hour.
32:12It had all the drama and all the integrity of a top gear stunt.
32:16They were just trying to up the ante, take it a little bit further, so that they got their picture in the London papers.
32:30And they were very good at that and making sure that they got the profile they wanted for their train,
32:36because then some of the glamour kind of spread around the network.
32:40So if you were sat on a train trumbling through the potato fields of Norfolk that wasn't going particularly quickly,
32:47you might think, oh, you know, with a couple of connections, I could be on the Flying Scotsman.
32:55For most of the year, the view down this east coast route is in darkness,
32:59since the Scotsman leaves before dawn.
33:01But in summer, it's worth looking up from your laptop.
33:06The highlight is the crossing of the Royal Border Bridge at Berwick.
33:11That was a box that every railfan wanted to tick.
33:24In about half an hour, we'll be stopping at Newcastle.
33:27In the brilliant and brutal crime film of 1971, Get Carter, Michael Caine leaves London for Newcastle,
33:38probably travelling on the Flying Scotsman.
33:41Well, it would be just like him to catch a named train rather than an anonymous one.
33:46In the opening credits, we see him in a BR Mark II first-class compartment of the kind that I practically grew up in.
33:54Never looked quite as good as Caine, of course.
33:57He's behaving in a very civilised manner, reading, Farewell, My Lovely.
34:04We see him going to the dining car, which still existed in 1971.
34:07I think the director, Mike Hodges, was saying, here is a man who does things correctly.
34:15He eats his soup in the approved manner, moving the spoon away from himself.
34:20But pretty soon, he'll be throwing people off the multi-storey car park at Gateshead.
34:31You're walking into the 704 service for London, King's Cross,
34:35where you want to departure from Newcastle, the next station stop.
34:39At seven o'clock, we pull into Newcastle, an airily beautiful station.
34:43We are joined by less bleary travellers, and the staff gear up to serve a second lot of breakfasts.
34:56Now we are non-stop to London.
34:58The many bridges over the time.
35:10They attest to an industrial heritage.
35:13Ships, coal, steel.
35:17The view from the windows of the Flying Scotsman would have changed around here
35:21in a way that would have gratified passengers.
35:23They were passing through a literal powerhouse.
35:32Here's a book by an enigmatic chap called S.N. Pike.
35:36Nobody seems to know what S.N. stood for.
35:39Mile by mile on Britain's railways.
35:42He chronicled the main lines of Britain in the late 1930s.
35:45At the stretch south from Newcastle for 30 miles or so, he says,
35:49at the east coast main line.
35:52We are now approaching a highly industrialised part of the country.
35:56And in the next few miles, many single line railways will be seen branching away to the right and left
36:01to serve the collieries, steelworks and other heavy industries here about.
36:06That would have been part of the glamour of the Flying Scotsman.
36:10The sense of being adjacent to the beating heart of England.
36:13That organ is rather harder to locate these days.
36:20Approaching York, we've come about 200 miles, and we're roughly halfway through our journey.
36:28We're not going to call it York, just as the interwar, non-stopping Scotsman didn't call it York.
36:33This is, in fact, the only Bombay Express on the east coast main line that doesn't call it York.
36:39I'm a bit annoyed about that.
36:41York's important.
36:43Took up 30 pages of the old Bradshaw timetable, did York.
36:47And I was born there.
36:48Would customers, platform three, please stand well clear.
36:54From the approaching train, there is a non-stop train approaching.
37:02But ignoring my hometown was part of the LNER's grand plan.
37:07The Scotsman's non-stop run was a logistical coup for the company.
37:11It's actually very hard to timetable a genuine express, because, if you think about it, all the other normal stopping trains get in the way.
37:22In 1928, as part of their PR campaign for the non-stop runs, the LNER offered all possible assistance to the makers of a feature film called The Flying Scotsman.
37:33When they saw the result, they wished they hadn't.
37:36It showed much inadvisable passenger behaviour.
37:40Far graver matters than feet on seats.
37:43Passengers climbed in and out of the carriages without necessarily waiting for the train to stop.
37:48The footplate crew were not paying attention.
37:51This was not how the LNER wanted to depict its crack express.
37:56What particularly annoyed Nigel Gresley, chief mechanical engineer of the LNER,
38:01was when the villain uncoupled the locomotive from the train using only a penknife.
38:11Gresley insisted on a disclaimer.
38:13For the purposes of the film, dramatic license has been taken with the safety features of The Flying Scotsman.
38:18By the time we get south of Peterborough, our train is racing along at over 100 miles an hour.
38:32Sir John Betjeman used to say the train made a different sound on this fenland because the rails were laid down on beds of reeds.
38:43The modern passenger sees no reed beds.
38:47In recent years the profitability of rapeseed oil has made Britain not so much a green and pleasant land as a yellow one.
38:52It's very easy to go to sleep when alongside these vast fields.
38:59On the old Scotsman, the cause of tiredness would have been drinking that Flying Scotsman cocktail before a five course lunch accompanied by half a bottle of wine.
39:09On the present day one, it's rather more to do with having got out of bed at five o'clock.
39:14Bang on time, we reach the outskirts of London and make our way into Kings Cross Station.
39:25Only people come into Kings Cross today.
39:28But until the 1970s, when the southern power stations went over to oil, tons of coal flowed in by day and by night.
39:36Apparently the station reeked of coal.
39:38In the last 40 years, London has waxed as the north has waned.
39:46That the modern Scotsman terminates at London rather than Edinburgh, perhaps shows the greater magnetic pull of the capital.
39:55There was a better north-south balance in those days.
39:59And our Scottish solicitor wouldn't have felt remotely intimidated about being in the capital.
40:04Also, he'd be dropping the name of the train that brought him here when he got to his business meetings.
40:10Came up on the Scotsman. The run was trouble-free.
40:16His enthusiasm for the train would remain unabated.
40:20That for the capital might have been checked, however,
40:23when he was immediately reminded of how crowded the place was.
40:26In 1947, the big four private railway companies of Britain were nationalised and condensed into one, British Railways.
40:43So began a muddled chapter of named train history.
40:47Naming trains was a way of proclaiming the end of wartime austerity.
40:50Many new ones were created under British Railways, like the Elizabethan Express in 1954.
40:57But now came competition from other forms of transport,
41:00and the pressure to accommodate the growing army of commuters.
41:04A less exuberant climate began to prevail.
41:08The luxury and fun of named trains began to seem antiquated, inegalitarian.
41:12One named train stood out as particularly frivolous.
41:23It's the subject of my third journey.
41:26If ever a name suited a train, it was that of the Brighton Bell,
41:31a mobile equivalent of the charming, slightly rackety town it served.
41:35It's so very British, the hospitality, the tea.
41:39It's just the way that you read about in novels, in British novels, you know.
41:43It's just so old-timey. That's why I like it.
41:47Unlike the Cornish Riviera Express and the Flying Scotsman, the bell is no longer in service.
41:52So this is going to be the hardest journey to replicate.
41:55Fortunately, this train is well chronicled, because it was used by newsworthy people, such as Laurence Olivier.
42:00Can you tell me how you're enjoying your stable deck this morning?
42:04I'm enjoying them very much, thank you.
42:06I have come to Victoria Station to catch a Brighton train
42:10that coincides with one of the Bell's six daily departures from London, the 11am.
42:17Our journey, then as now, will take an hour.
42:21I've hired this jacket, by the way.
42:24I think it's ripe for a train that was rather Bertie Worcester-ish.
42:31Anyone approaching these modern, unnamed trains, and this is actually an Electrostar 377,
42:39is probably thinking about their destination.
42:41But people approaching the Brighton Bell were thinking about the Brighton Bell.
42:45They would have smelled coffee brewing, perhaps kippers frying,
42:49and being Brighton Bell sort of people, they'd have been wondering whether it was too early for a drink,
42:53and rather hoping it wasn't.
42:55They'd have been greeted at every door by a white-jacketed attendant,
42:57and they wouldn't have been at all shy about saying,
43:01third-class that way, sir, to anyone who didn't quite look first-class material.
43:09Like Brighton, the Bell had a whiff of the louche about it.
43:13Each carriage was named, and the names were of the kind of girl a chap might want to go to Brighton with.
43:19Brighton has always been racy.
43:21This poster is typical of how the railways advertised the place.
43:26Sort of classy sleaze, and somehow the Bell summed that up.
43:30The Brighton Bell was launched by the Southern Railway on 1 January 1933.
43:35The proud flagship of their new electrified system, at that time the biggest in the world.
43:43If you go back to where this train came from, it was from an era post the Wall Street crash,
43:51and we have the Chancellor, Winston Churchill, giving tax incentives to companies to do major projects that would soak up manpower.
43:58And so the Southern Railway decided that they would launch this amazing electrification programme,
44:05which, of course, would bring mega benefits to the whole of the commuting south-east.
44:09The Brighton Bell happened to be the flagship of that programme.
44:13This train is the Southern Service to Brighton.
44:18We are now approaching Flatton Junction.
44:21Please mind the gap between the platform and the train.
44:23We're hardly out of London, yet already we have a stop, Clapham Junction.
44:30The Bell famously never stopped.
44:34In 1952, the BBC chose her non-stop journey to demonstrate one of the earliest uses of time-lapse on television.
44:43Filmed from the clean and smoke-free driver's cab, the electrical bell seems to be whizzing along at the speed of sound.
44:50Her top speed in reality was 80.
44:58The Bell was a paradoxical train.
45:01It took its place amongst the Southern Railway's fleet of electric trains.
45:06And we can think of these as pretty humble vehicles, rather like tube trains, pistons bringing people in and out of London.
45:13Unlike with most famous trains, there was no glamorous locomotive on the front of the Brighton Bell.
45:20To the lay observer, it looked just like a line of carriages.
45:24But what carriages they were.
45:26The writer, Keith Waterhouse, who lived in Brighton, said that the Brighton Bell resembled a string of sausages pulled out into the Palace of Versailles.
45:34Everything about it was special.
45:45I think the most magical thing is that there were only 15 carriages.
45:48And each of those carriages was individually designed by one of the leading design houses of the day.
45:54So we have Heels doing just one car, Maples doing one car, Wearing and Gillow one car.
45:59I mean, these are just fantastic names.
46:02And it meant that when you went on, it was a different experience in every single car.
46:06Words like jazz age and art deco describe the interior of the bell.
46:15The elaborate marquetry featured the sunburst motif that was coming into fashion for cocktail cabinets and radios.
46:27And then, of course, you get the fabrics, very plush moquettes, very much up to date for the day, art deco, beautiful leave patterns.
46:34Fairly bright colours, so it was an uplifting experience to go down.
46:41You had these little hangers and brackets on the side, one for your hat, one to hang your coat on.
46:48It was really done up nice.
46:54You know, you stepped on there and you thought you were royalty.
46:57It really was a beautiful thing.
47:00The table lamps on the bell were celluloid.
47:05They were pink.
47:07Somebody once described the bell on the move as being a blur of table lamps.
47:17The bell was making an aesthetic statement.
47:19It was saying, I am a work of art.
47:23Whereas today's train is not.
47:25Today's train, you sense, is designed not to offend anyone.
47:28It has the rather washed out tones of a hospital.
47:34East Croydon.
47:36Our second stop.
47:38This is slightly wearisome.
47:39The Brighton bell was a commuter train of sorts.
47:45It never left either London or Brighton before 9.30 in the morning.
47:50The last one left Victoria at 11pm.
47:54So it was a train for late risers and late finishers.
47:57The bell was also known as the Equity Express because of all the theatricals.
48:03He used it to get home at night.
48:05Terence Rattigan, Laurence Olivier, Flora Robson, Jimmy Edwards, Peter Jones and Dora Bryan were all regulars on the train.
48:14The writer and broadcaster Alan Melville lived in Brighton and often travelled on the bell.
48:23He wrote, the most lethal of the bell's journeys is the 11pm from Victoria.
48:29And you have to be very careful indeed if, after a long day's grind, you don't want to be trapped with a lot of gay chat about how fabulous the business was tonight
48:37or how unreceptive the audience was all the way through Act One, but how they brightened up after the interval.
48:49The bell was slightly more expensive than the regular Brighton trains.
48:54This is because it was built and manned by the luxury Pullman Company.
48:58They charged a supplement.
49:00You were also under pressure to buy a meal.
49:02They used to do breakfast, you know, like the kippers and eggs and bacon, everything.
49:07Anything normal you buy, you could get a steak breakfast if you wanted to.
49:13And the coffee was to die for. I've never tasted coffee since like that, in big silver jugs.
49:19Oh, it was beautiful.
49:25In place of what was, in effect, a pretty good restaurant on wheels, staffed by white-coated attendants,
49:32we have today a lady with a trolley.
49:39Good afternoon. Any tea or coffee for you, sir?
49:42Hi. Have you got any champagne?
49:45Champagne? No, we don't sell any champagne.
49:48Would you mind if, could you just give me a glass?
49:53There is your glass.
49:54Thank you. That's very kind.
49:56I bought this earlier.
50:00A quarter of a bottle of champagne, well, more or less.
50:04Quarter bottles of champagne and alcohol in general were pioneered by the Pullman Company.
50:10They were then introduced on the Brighton Bell.
50:12They would have gone through a lot of quarter bottles of champagne on the Brighton Bell, I imagine.
50:15Yeah, it's warm.
50:31It's warm.
50:32As we approached Brighton, I approached the loo.
50:44I don't like electric doors.
50:47They take all the fun out of going to the toilet.
50:49I have read about the WCs on the Bell.
50:57The walls were coloured eau de neil with black beading.
51:02Sinks were black porcelain.
51:05There were iridescent glass soap dispensers.
51:09The floor was marbled mosaic flecked with mother-of-pearl.
51:12It's not like that any more.
51:22But as with every famous beauty, the bell's charms began to fade.
51:27Or so British Rail concluded.
51:31By the late 60s, the bell was starting to resemble a museum on wheels.
51:36So there was some updating.
51:38The carriage exteriors were repainted from umber and cream into B.R.'s dure new livery of blue and grey.
51:48Blue and dirt.
51:50It was known.
51:52As for the first-class armchairs, out went the thirties autumnal shades.
51:57In came Intercity 70 maquette.
52:01Black.
52:03The part of the train that actually needed their attention, the underneath, was left alone.
52:09It was just so rough. It was a beast.
52:11It really was. All the underneath was worn.
52:14And that was when I got on it.
52:16I'd already done 30 or 40 years.
52:18But when I started driving the thing, it did used to roll and rock all over the place.
52:24And if you went from one of the main line to the local line and went over the crossings,
52:28you wouldn't dare open the controller going across because the back used to roll and tilt.
52:32I had complaints about spilt coffee and that.
52:38The regulars were braced for the bumps.
52:41But when, in 1970, British Rail announced they were dropping kippers from the menu,
52:46Baron Olivier of Brighton fought for their reinstatement.
52:49He was magnanimous in victory, gracefully avoiding the K word.
52:53I think, since this complaint of mine, I'm very happy and I'm very grateful to British Railways
53:00for the way they've taken the matter.
53:02Extreme dignity, I think.
53:04And I'm very happy that the Brighton Bell will continue to be one of the fan trains of the world.
53:11It's as important in its way as the Master Cutler in the North, as the Flying Scotsman, the Orient Express.
53:16They should all keep their faces well lifted, I think.
53:21Thank you very much, sir Lance.
53:29They proved a Pyrrhic victory.
53:32Soon after, British Rail announced they were selling off the whole train.
53:36The actor, Sir John Clemens, CBE, had a lot to say about that.
53:39Well, of course, for us, who use it a great deal, it's a tragedy.
53:45It's a, it'll be a very sad loss for all of us, because it's, I suppose, the most civilised short journey in England, which we're going to lose.
53:53What adds insult to injury is that they're going to replace it by these ghastly buffet cars, which are absolute hell.
53:58Visiting American billionaire Joseph Wallace Keane thought British Rail had just plain got it wrong.
54:04Well, I think it's very quaint, and it's one of the last remaining trains that has this personality and character.
54:11Great Britain lose it. They're losing something else, you know, I think very pertinent to a nation.
54:17It's become kind of a landmark.
54:19This old London Bridge.
54:22It's nothing like the Tower Bridge, but still, it was one landmark gone, and here goes another one.
54:27I think it's kind of sad.
54:28The Brighton Bells' last run was on Sunday, the 30th of April, 1972.
54:47Being the bell, she went out in theatrical style.
54:50As we run into the station, they got a massive great brass band, and it all started up, and I was playing all this music and everything.
54:59Passengers in period costume, vans playing. It was more like a festival than the ending of an era.
55:04And then all these people that I really, I didn't know, but obviously, people of higher standing than me, they were all on there and looking through the train.
55:18All the bell regulars and their lovey friends turned up to say goodbye.
55:28Actress Moira Lister, Dame Flora Robson, Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grand.
55:34The man behind the moustache, Jimmy Wacko Edwards.
55:38Oddly enough, the as yet unknown Bob Marley was on board somewhere.
55:41All not so much drinking as quaffing champagne, in that way of old fashioned ravers.
55:46Which might explain the amount of wobbling as they all got off the train for the final time.
55:59Even today, Brighton seems haunted by the bell. So perfect was the match.
56:04It was a good example of why naming trains worked.
56:06The bell became famous, and it promoted its destination.
56:09Thank God no one closed Brighton because it looked a bit battered.
56:14That's part of its charm.
56:16Along with uninhibited joie de vivre.
56:19Quirky nostalgia is what brings the crowds here.
56:22And I think it would still be filling the bell.
56:28But British Rail did not see it like that.
56:31The future was about one brand, not multiple eccentric brands.
56:35From 1976, a new breed of fast diesels became omnipresent.
56:41The Intercity 125.
56:43And this was the only name BR was interested in.
56:47Do you think it's really rather too clinical?
56:50You'd prefer to have the Age of Elegance back again?
56:52I like the Age of Elegance, personally.
56:55Would you be prepared to pay for that?
56:56Because British Rail said it cost far too much to keep it going.
57:00Well, I would. I'd be prepared to.
57:02Because I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't.
57:04But then, of course, one had the choice.
57:06And now one doesn't have the choice.
57:07Some of the best-known names did survive, but in a tokenistic way.
57:13Under BR, the rationale behind the naming of trains had died.
57:18I've written on the modern equivalents of three of the most famous named trains.
57:23And it is a bit difficult to avoid concluding that, for all the efficiency of those trains,
57:29and they were all on time, and the undoubted skill and amiability of the staff,
57:34the present falls some way short of the past.
57:39Let's face it, modern railway travel is rather lacking in style and character.
57:44Can't we have back some of the features that made the named train so enjoyable?
57:48Who wouldn't rather have compartments than close-together airline seating,
57:54that is, seats with very high backs?
57:56Why must trains try and emulate airlines?
57:59I knew somebody who was on a train to the West Country,
58:02and the guard announced,
58:03we are now commencing our approach to Bristol Temple Meads.
58:06And who wouldn't rather have dining cars than the apt-seat trolley service,
58:10which is just like being served a meal in a hospital?
58:13Railway style need not be a lost cause.
58:15There is some rekindling of named train romance.
58:19The Brighton Bell is being restored to run on Sundays.
58:23Virgin say the northbound leg of the Scotsman is to be resumed.
58:26And I'm very glad that dining has been brought back to the Cornish Riviera Express.
58:31I like to think that we can read the names of these historic titled trains,
58:36not as we might the inscriptions in a graveyard,
58:40but as a pointer to a railway future that is more confident and more fun.
58:45And more fun.
58:47But then, I always was an optimist.
58:54Two episodes in with great reviews, Top Gear back on form and streaming now on BBC iPlayer.
59:01Coming up, watch this cult drama avidly in the 90s.
59:05Work hard, play hard with this life.
59:08Work hard, play hard with this dream.
59:11And at this point watch,
59:12think this cult drama isissioned in the 90s in the 90s.
59:13That's for bringing now that the borrowed singer
59:14today is much to hold...
59:19..not as
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