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00:01A railway line in the middle of nowhere that changed the course of World War II.
00:07This is seriously insane.
00:09Hitler was mad in many ways, and this is just another way in which he was crazy.
00:15A bloody battle to control its precious cargo.
00:21This vast cantilever bridge was built to be blown up.
00:25Up there, the machine gun bunker protecting the bridge.
00:31And a town on the move.
00:35There is a real threat of collapse.
00:37With this mega mine underneath the town, it's not your usual place to live.
00:43The station and the entire town around it are having to be moved.
00:51This is the Karuna to Narvik railway line.
00:55And here is its hidden story.
01:01In this series, we explore some of the greatest railways in the world.
01:07And the secrets surrounding them.
01:11From the ancient hills of Europe to the wastes of the Yukon Valley in North America,
01:16their dark and forgotten pasts have left their mark on history.
01:35Out in the fjords of northern Norway lies a railway line in some of the harshest terrain on earth.
01:46This line is built in one of the most remote parts of the world.
01:51It's almost a hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle.
01:57Several months a year, it's light or it's dark.
02:02It's really, in many ways, not the most pleasant place to live.
02:08These are icy wastelands.
02:10Only people who'd been there really before the railway prospectors turned up were the Sami people.
02:15And that was just their way of life.
02:17To build this railway and then work in these conditions, that took people of a real certain type.
02:25High in the Arctic Circle, in the northern reaches of Scandinavia, this line straddles both Sweden and Norway,
02:33linking the coast of the Norwegian Sea with the rich resources of inland Sweden.
02:42It sprung up out of nowhere at the turn of the 20th century.
02:48And it now serves two thriving towns.
02:53Narvik and Kiruna.
02:57Kiruna is one of the oddest places you can imagine.
03:00Compasses don't work there.
03:02But yet the local people seem really quite comfortable with it all and take it all into their stride.
03:08And beneath the town, a secret megacity sprawls underground.
03:15This extraordinary place gave birth to a remarkable railway line.
03:22This railway line is quite fascinating from the point of locomotives.
03:26They're pulling 100 tonnes.
03:3068 wagons.
03:31That's a huge, huge amount.
03:36But its most fascinating secrets are hidden from view.
03:45If you really want to understand why this railway line is so important,
03:48you've got to go off the railway tracks and look and find what's at the bottom of the Narvik Fjord
03:53and what is beneath the waves.
03:59Today we think of Narvik as being this somewhat obscure port in the north of Norway.
04:04That's indeed if anybody's heard of it.
04:06But actually sunk there are scores of battleships, destroyers, U-boats.
04:14All of which are testament to the absolute strategic vitality of that port.
04:23It's an incredibly eerie and poignant sight to see all those battleships still there just on the fjord bed.
04:31These wrecks date back to World War II.
04:35But what happened here in the quiet waters around Narvik?
04:40What were they fighting for?
04:43Norwegian underwater photographer, Frank Bang, explores these sunken tombs.
04:51The 9th of April, 1940.
04:55In the early morning, ten destroyers came into Narvik.
04:58There were tons of ships waiting to get to the port.
05:03It was snowing that day, so they couldn't see anything.
05:06They were hearing some noise outside when the German destroyers sent some torpedoes
05:15and then most of the Norwegian boats down to the death.
05:20It's like a graveyard.
05:29The reason for this lethal attack lies in the ground at the other end of the railway line.
05:35It's one of the raw materials that changed the world.
05:40Iron ore.
05:47The mineral had been discovered in Karuna in the 17th century,
05:51although its remote location prevented it from being mined.
05:56But with the onset of the Industrial Revolution 100 years later,
06:00the world was crying out for it.
06:05Engineers were going to have to find a way to exploit the ore.
06:12And this called for building works on a massive scale.
06:17They had to think about how they were going to get it out.
06:19How were they going to transport it worldwide?
06:22So the railway is the first step.
06:25But actually, it's not just the transportation.
06:28It's about processing the ore, providing support for the workers.
06:33Where were they going to live? What were they going to do?
06:37The whole system, they're created from nothing.
06:41The iron ore mines, the railway and the harbour together,
06:44are actually one giant mega system.
06:47They're one piece of infrastructure.
06:48They are one and the same.
06:53In addition to the railway line and the towns of Karuna and Narvik,
06:58the mega system also included a power station and a port in Sweden.
07:05All of these were needed to mine the vast amounts of iron ore.
07:10But the Swedish harbour was icebound for several months of the year,
07:15whereas Narvik, thanks to the Gulf Stream, never freezes.
07:21That meant that everything depended on the Karuna to Narvik railway line.
07:29Construction began in 1898.
07:33Norwegian guide Steingrim Sneev has expert knowledge about the workers who made it happen.
07:41There were 5,000 of them working here in the mountain, and they were very difficult conditions.
07:50There's a lot of high mountains, and when they started to make the line,
07:55they have to be hanging rope down the mountainside to try to drill out stone.
08:04One of the techniques at the time was to insert explosives into a hole in the rock face.
08:11It was an efficient method, but extremely dangerous.
08:16And the difficult terrain was only part of the challenge.
08:21For half of the year, workers had to contend with the freezing weather during Arctic winters
08:27that were icy, snow-covered and brutally cold.
08:38You could wake up one morning and there is two or three meters snow on the place you used to
08:44work.
08:45So you have to use more or less the whole day removing snow before you could start with work again.
08:53It's really, really hard.
08:56They made a line in four years.
08:59That is fantastic.
09:02And remember, this was the first time they have built a railway so far north in the world.
09:15The line was opened in 1903, and it was originally serviced by steam engines.
09:21But soon, electric trains were introduced.
09:27The extreme weather conditions at this latitude demanded special machines.
09:34One of these was a rotating snow plough, which was fitted to the front of the train.
09:45But if the weather was one obstacle, there was another, more human threat on the mind of the railway engineers.
09:54At the time of construction, the enemy of the Norwegian people were actually the Russians.
10:01At the beginning of the 20th century, Finland was part of the Russian Empire.
10:06And building a railway line across Sweden and Norway exposed both countries to a potential threat.
10:14In peacetime, you hope for the best.
10:16But in the back of everybody's mind was the fact that this railway line could be used in a time
10:22of war.
10:22And they needed a get out clause.
10:26The military decided that this is a very important line, and they want to protect it against enemies from east.
10:35They said that if you build a line, you have to have one point to break the line.
10:44The solution was to build a bridge with an explosive secret.
10:52The Nordale Bridge, it's eerie, and it's just clinging in there in the valley.
10:58But it's beautiful as well.
11:02It looks, from a distance, incredibly spindly.
11:05It's made up of lots of tiny different elements.
11:08But, don't be fooled, it's incredibly strong.
11:13At 130 feet high, and 590 feet long, the bridge had to carry the heavily loaded iron ore trains, while
11:22serving a darker purpose.
11:27Up there, you can see a bunker.
11:30This is a machine gun bunker, protecting the bridge against east.
11:39The Nordale Bridge goes over a bit of water, which isn't even necessary.
11:43They could have bypassed it by a very, very simple curve.
11:46It sounds crazy, but it was a purpose-built Achilles heel in the railway's construction.
11:54The bridge took a year to build.
11:57An incredible effort for a structure that wasn't even needed in the first place.
12:05Not many people now, today, looking at it, realise that this great big bridge, this vast cantilever bridge, was built
12:13to be blown up.
12:15The challenge was how to construct it so it could be destroyed at will.
12:23Engineists don't normally think about how to demolish their things, that's someone else's job.
12:28But, to actually go for it, you'd have to blow up the foundations.
12:33If you'd destroyed individual pieces, well, that's all relatively easy to put back together.
12:38You'd have to go for the foundations.
12:43And go for the foundations they did.
12:48When they build this huge bridge, they make mine chambers to put explosive in.
12:55So they put it in here. It's one meters and forty deep.
12:58At the same time, they build stock house for explosive on the end of the bridge over there.
13:10Everything was geared for an attack from the east, but in the end, the threat would actually come from the
13:17west.
13:20Decades after the bridge was built, the region would face the might of the Wehrmacht.
13:29During the 1930s, Germany built a mighty fighting force of planes, tanks and ships.
13:37And trained an army of one and a half million men as it prepared for war.
13:43It also imported 22 million tons of iron ore per year, 45% of which was from Karuna.
13:53But why was this mineral so crucial to the Nazi cause?
13:59Iron ore is a vital part of the manufacturing process for munitions, armaments, you name it.
14:06Without it, Hitler's war machine is almost crippled.
14:12Iron is the main component of steel.
14:15And steel makes tanks, battleships and shells.
14:20But after war broke out, Germany found itself cut off from its usual sources of iron ore.
14:30This railway line is an absolutely vital part of Hitler's war plan.
14:36Why? Because he needs the iron ore from Karuna in Sweden
14:40to be shipped along the railway line to Narvik, the Norwegian port.
14:46From there, it can be taken to the heart of the Third Reich.
14:51It's an absolutely strategically vital part of Hitler's war plan.
14:59Hitler knew, as Britain knew, that if the supplies of iron ore were choked off,
15:05German industry could only last for months.
15:08And so Norway became vitally important to Hitler.
15:12He had to seize it in order to ensure that the war materials of Germany kept functioning,
15:18that the wheels of the factories kept turning.
15:22Hitler sent the pride of the German navy to attack the ports of Norway.
15:27And Narvik was top of the list.
15:32It was a surprise attack.
15:34They arrived in the middle of the night.
15:36The Norwegians weren't expecting them.
15:38They attacked by destroyers transporting troops by sea.
15:43Ten German destroyers came in here at a little before five in the morning,
15:48on the 9th of April, 1940.
15:50There were two Norwegian navy ships sitting in the harbour,
15:55the Eitzel and the Norge.
15:56They were both sunk instantly.
15:59They were torpedoed by the Germans, and 282 sailors died.
16:06It took only a very short time for the Germans to sink those ships
16:10and take the port of Narvik.
16:16But any jubilation was to be short-lived.
16:20What they had done was to fire the opening shots
16:23in what were to be two major naval battles.
16:29Five British warships descended on Narvik.
16:39The battles that followed, on April 10th and April 13th, 1940,
16:44saw some of the most bitter fighting of the war so far.
16:58Meanwhile, a group of Norwegian soldiers boarded a train.
17:03Their mission?
17:05To blow up the railway line's weakest link,
17:08the Nordau Bridge.
17:12Norwegian saboteurs attempted to destroy the bridge.
17:17Conditions were so unfavourable
17:19that the damage they managed to do to it was minimal.
17:26What was meant to be straightforward,
17:28explode the Nordau Bridge,
17:30that had been built to be blown up in the first place,
17:32turned out to be a fiasco.
17:37For one thing,
17:38there was not enough dynamite in the on-site reserves.
17:41And that was just the beginning of the problems.
17:50This mining chamber, they put explosive in.
17:53What they should do,
17:55but the mining chamber was filled with ice.
17:59They didn't succeed.
18:02Blowing up the Nordau Bridge may have been a failure,
18:05but back in Narvik, the naval battle was in full flow.
18:12The railway line was badly damaged,
18:15and many ships were sunk during the fighting.
18:21Today, poignant reminders of the battle still capture the scene.
18:27Hidden beneath the surface are the haunting wrecks
18:30of more than 40 sunken ships.
18:36These wrecks are still there in the waters and the fjords
18:39of northern Norway, still waiting to be explored.
18:44We have two wrecks underneath us.
18:47Strossa is a Swedish iron ore ship.
18:51And Marta Hendrik Fisser is the German iron ore ship.
18:56It's one of the most famous wrecks to die when people come to Narvik.
19:02Shipwrecks are like gold for historians.
19:05They tell you so much.
19:07This is history buried underneath that fjord.
19:10So, you know, for a historian to look under the water
19:14and see what's there,
19:16it's almost like a birthday and Christmas at the same time.
19:22In 2011, Frank Bang found what was perhaps
19:26Narvik's most precious underwater secret.
19:30A Nazi bronze eagle.
19:37This had to go to a museum if it's still there, because there are treasure hunters all over the world.
19:43And it sells on the black market for thousands and millions of crowns.
19:49So, me and my friends, we did two days of searching.
19:55The second day, we found it.
19:58The eagle belonged to the destroyer Erich Giese, which was sunk on the 13th of April, the final day of
20:06the battle.
20:10On that day, the four remaining German destroyers ran out of fuel and ran aground in the nearby Rombachsfjord.
20:24The surviving German officers escaped the wreck and ran up to the railway line in the hope of securing it.
20:35It was a victory for the Allies, at least at sea.
20:41British forces had landed at Narvik and fought a long battle along with their French and Norwegian allies
20:47to try and hang on to that vital port.
20:51On the Swedish side, a secret weapon was being deployed on the train tracks.
20:59In May 1940, in the mine's workshops, work was completed on two enormous armoured trains, the Karuna and the Boden.
21:10They were made from iron ore carts, which were covered with armour plates and fitted with anti-aircraft machine guns.
21:18These were huge, destructive machines.
21:25Only a few days after construction was completed, the Karuna was in action a few miles outside Narvik, exchanging fire
21:32with German aircraft.
21:42Now the tables were turned and the Germans had lost the advantage, it was their turn to try and sabotage
21:48the railway line by bringing down the power lines.
21:57The fighting around Narvik continued until June 1940.
22:04The Battle of Narvik was something of a draw.
22:06Although the Allies won and managed to repulse the German forces,
22:10the Allies then had to withdraw to use their ships for Dunkirk, so left the area for the Germans to
22:14retake.
22:18So ultimately, it was a German victory.
22:22But at what cost?
22:27In the long-term history of the war, it probably made the invasion of Britain impossible,
22:33because 50% of the German destroyers were destroyed in the Norway campaign by the Royal Navy.
22:41But for now, the Germans were able to savour their victory.
22:46They repaired the damage to the railway line, and it seemed nothing could stop them.
22:53The failure by the British only leaves Hitler much stronger.
22:58It now means he's got access to all that iron ore.
23:01He controls the railway line.
23:06But this wasn't enough for Hitler.
23:08He was ambitious.
23:10He was confident.
23:11And he wanted more.
23:14And so he greenlit a scheme to take the railway line to another level.
23:21Today, traces of that project can be seen from the motorway south of Narvik.
23:27Stig Olaf Johansson knows these well.
23:32When I was a loaded driver, I discovered tunnels near the road that led to nothing.
23:40And I thought that was mysterious, and I started my own investigation.
23:48What Stig discovered is not written in the history books.
23:52He found a railway line with a very grim past.
23:59Hitler had, on paper, a very logical idea to build a railway line that would link Narvik all the way
24:06to the south of Norway,
24:08and therefore enable him to easily transport all this iron ore, you know, near to Germany.
24:16Hitler's dream was to build a railway line that would stretch from Oslo to the border with Russia, just 1400
24:24miles south of the North Pole.
24:28That would allow the Germans to move iron ore and troops wherever and whenever they wanted.
24:38The new line would be called the Polarbanen, or simply the Polar Line.
24:46It's very difficult building railway lines in a country like Norway.
24:50But Hitler was very ambitious, crazily ambitious, and wanted to build a 2,000-kilometre railway line in just two
24:58years.
24:59This is seriously insane.
25:02You know, Hitler was mad in many ways, and this is just another way in which he was crazy.
25:10Hitler was planning to use the existing railway lines wherever possible, but there was still a long section that had
25:16to be constructed.
25:18A large number of fjords had to be crossed, and many tunnels had to be built.
25:27It seemed an impossible project, and from day one, there were problems.
25:36Hitler entrusted the building of the Polarbanen to the Tod organisation, which was a military and civilian engineering conglomerate
25:43that built many of the pieces of infrastructure in the Third Reich.
25:46And to do the actual building, they employed prisoners of war, slave labour in effect.
25:54In total, 30,000 Soviet prisoners of war worked on the Polarbanen project.
26:02Slave labour he uses takes a long time to get there, and when it gets there, it doesn't have the
26:08expertise, the materials, or indeed the time needed
26:11to produce what would be one of the most incredible engineering feats in railway history.
26:21People today don't realise they drive through that landscape, they're actually driving past a chunk of history.
26:26You can still see lots of dotted about parts of the civil engineering.
26:31Just some tunnels, some tracks, a few buildings, vestiges really.
26:35It's a ghostly reminder of what once was and what could have been.
26:43A short walk from the motorway, people can still find the remains of the Polar Line.
26:50That was a bridge from one tunnel to another.
26:58You see, one of the stones in that wall weighs over 200 kilos.
27:06How did they get a stone there? By lifting.
27:10Many prisoners of war lifted it in place.
27:16The conditions in which the poor people who worked on that railway line, the forced labourers, the prisoners of war,
27:22slaves essentially, were absolutely dreadful.
27:26In this tiny creek, 500 workers slaved away under the watch of armed guards.
27:34Many of them froze to death during the Arctic winter.
27:38But the cold was not the only danger.
27:43They drilled here and put dynamite in here and blasted.
27:50It was very dangerous because sometimes they didn't get all the stones to fall down.
27:57And they went inside the tunnel and suddenly a block came down and killed one of the workers.
28:05Many people got killed.
28:08Tragically, it is estimated that the number of prisoners who died working on the Polar Line was as many as
28:1515,000.
28:22But this line was not the only grandiose project Hitler had in mind for this part of the world.
28:27An abandoned fortress 32 miles west of the Polar Bahnen is there to prove it.
28:33As World War II expert Stenar Ã…s knows.
28:42Hitler actually was very obsessed by this idea that Norway was the zone of destiny.
28:49So it was very dramatically speaking.
28:51And he had this idea that the northern flanks of his occupied region was easy to invade.
28:59This is a German map showing all the fortifications they built during the Second World War II to try to
29:06cover the defence lines of these areas and the fjords, which could give access to the railway in the inland.
29:18These coastal artillery batteries were part of the Atlantic War.
29:23The defence system built by the Germans to protect the occupied territories that stretched all the way from Spain to
29:30the tip of Norway.
29:33It was possibly the greatest single construction project undertaken during the 20th century.
29:43You see that topography of Norway and the geography of Norway is quite different than Denmark and France.
29:49You can't cover all the coast because there are fjords, there are rugged coastlines and there are islands all over
29:56the place.
29:58Hitler had spent all sorts of money and energy in fortifying a country that never needed to be fortified.
30:07There were approximately 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war in Norway.
30:12They were ruthlessly exploited by the Nazis to build more than 200 bunkers along the coast to form part of
30:18the Atlantic War.
30:21But using them for the construction of the Polar Line was not as successful.
30:28Hitler's mad ambition had come up against reality.
30:32The terrible Arctic conditions, along with a workforce with no expertise and no allegiance to the Reich, meant progress was
30:40extremely slow.
30:45This railway was never completed.
30:47Only about 30 to 40 kilometres of the line was ever constructed.
30:50It didn't ever see out in the Second World War.
30:54The Polar Line may have been a failure, but it arguably played an important role in the outcome of the
31:00war.
31:03Hitler was so obsessed with Norway that he kept an extraordinary large number of troops, whole divisions there throughout the
31:09war,
31:10who were uselessly occupied and just sitting there when they were desperately needed, for example, on the Eastern Front.
31:16It became an absolute idée fixée for Hitler.
31:22He wanted to hang onto it at any cost, even when there were no Allied plans to invade it.
31:30In 1945, there were still 400,000 German troops in Norway as a result of Hitler's direct orders.
31:38It was an army that could have been deployed elsewhere, an army that could have changed the course of history.
31:50Once the war ended, the railway line continued to carry iron ore, and it went from strength to strength.
32:00Ironically, it was during a time of peace that the Nordau Bridge eventually met its end.
32:07Today, train travellers can still see the abandoned structure from their windows,
32:12a remarkable but obsolete piece of engineering, which simply became a victim of progress and change.
32:22One of the reasons the bridge has been taken out of service is because it can't cope with the size
32:26of the trains today.
32:29Today's trains on the Karuna line are actually some of the biggest electric-powered trains in the world.
32:36They are pulling huge, huge loads.
32:4068 wagons, 100 tonnes, over quite steep gradients.
32:45That's a lot of power in that loco.
32:49When they were first introduced, electric trains on the line were only able to pull 1,900 tonnes.
32:58Incredibly, today, the capacity is 6,800 tonnes.
33:04Every day, ten trains run from Karuna to Narvik,
33:08each filled with enough iron ore to manufacture 70,000 cars.
33:15They are able to travel through rough, difficult mountain terrain in all weathers.
33:22But luckily, the last leg of the journey is downhill.
33:28Cleverly, they use the braking system to recharge the batteries, and they get so much power from that.
33:34Once they've unloaded the ore, they can take that train back up under that saved power.
33:41Thanks to this, the trains are able to use the thousands of kilowatts per hour they produce to travel all
33:47the way back to the Swedish border.
33:53This megatrain has allowed the mine to go into overdrive.
33:59What started as a hole in the ground is now one of the most sophisticated mines anywhere in the world.
34:06They've gone from open-cast mining and removing the top of the mountain to going over a kilometre underneath.
34:13And underneath there is a whole world in itself.
34:17It's a huge, huge city, but underground.
34:23The mining operation at Karuna is absolutely vast.
34:28There are something like 400 kilometres of roads and routes underneath.
34:32And there are even trains inside that mine.
34:39The technological mega-system may have been a grand project at the turn of the 20th century.
34:45But its engineers would have been hard pushed to guess just how big and high-tech the mine would be
34:51today.
34:56Over the past 100 years, out of everyone's sight, level after level have been dug in order to reach the
35:03precious iron ore.
35:06And it now takes an astonishing 20 minutes to get to the heart of the mine.
35:13I remember the first time I went down the mine.
35:17It was eight years ago.
35:19I heard some stories about the old levels from the 70s and 80s that we left behind.
35:27And closed, like dining rooms, who haven't been touched in the 40 years.
35:33Of course there are stories about ghosts and people who had been disappeared.
35:38It's a mine, it's a dark place. I don't know if it's true.
35:44Ghosts or no ghosts, business continues as usual.
35:49At nearly a mile deep, the main haulage level is pivotal to the whole operation.
35:55Here the remotely controlled trains run back and forth every day, carrying newly extracted iron ore, before dumping it into
36:04giant crushes.
36:07There are no storage facilities here, so it's crucial that the mined mineral is continually on the move.
36:15If you look at the bigger picture, like what we do here, in a few hours or like a day,
36:21this ore will be in a boat.
36:26Mining here never stops.
36:29They extract 75,000 tonnes of iron ore every single day of the year.
36:35That's roughly the amount needed to build a 12-storey building.
36:42I find the scale of this mine absolutely mind-boggling.
36:46And the mine is king, there is no doubt about that.
36:50The town is people's homes and people's lives, but the mine is the reason they are there.
36:55And to be dominated by that one huge industry is incredible.
37:02But the town is paying a high price for the success of the mine and its railway line.
37:10Iron ore may have made Karuna a lot of money, but also it's ultimately destroying the town.
37:17The Swedes have excavated so much iron ore that now the town is literally sinking.
37:27In 1898, when they set out to build Karuna, they wanted to make the perfect town.
37:34They thought about the civic planning, the direction of the streets and the architecture
37:38and the extra buildings that people would need, the churches, the shops.
37:42And they put it in place.
37:44And for over 100 years, it worked.
37:50Who could predict that the mine would get so huge?
37:53It's spread out underneath the town and now what was a safe place to be
37:59is actually being literally undermined.
38:08Already, huge swathes of land have collapsed and the inhabited areas are now in danger.
38:17Dotted around on the roads and the buildings, there were various monitoring devices
38:22and even just marks measuring how far things are cracking and what's moving.
38:28Quite an eerie place to live.
38:31This dramatic situation has also affected the railway line.
38:37The entire history of the train line has never been dull.
38:40But now, one of the most extraordinary things in its life is happening,
38:45which is that the station and the entire town around it
38:48are having to be moved three kilometres to the east.
38:52Such is the extent of the collapse of the mine underneath,
38:55that it's no longer stable at ground level.
38:58The railway station, built well over a century ago, and that was once at the heart of the town,
39:04is now a pile of rubble.
39:09Rasmus Norling explains.
39:30The railway station was so close to the mine that it was one of the first buildings to have to
39:35go.
39:38What I find extraordinary is that Karuna is this weird place,
39:41and the people there are very kind of laid back and blasé about what's happening to their town.
39:48You know, they've got cracks on the walls, their houses are falling down,
39:52yet they just kind of shrug their shoulders and think that somehow it'll be OK.
39:59The historic station has been replaced by a temporary one, built in a safer location.
40:06Eventually, there will be a new town centre two miles down the road.
40:12It's an epic project for a town in which 20,000 people live.
40:17The whole thing makes for a bittersweet experience.
40:22As humans, we get attached to our environment, and the people of Karuna are no different.
40:28So, although the town is collapsing, we can't save all the buildings,
40:34and the masonry ones are never going to move.
40:37But things made up of timber, they can be moved.
40:43The construction team are literally moving the town's houses and iconic buildings down the road.
40:51It's strange and a little surreal, but it's working.
40:58It's not the ideal solution. Nobody wants to move.
41:01But being able to take those focal buildings and rebuild your town around them
41:05is fantastic for the human spirit.
41:08It's an event. Every time a house rolls, there are people standing on the way to follow it
41:15while it moves to its new location.
41:18It's not every day that you see your house roll by on the street, so of course it's a big
41:22thing.
41:26Some of the town's favourite buildings can't be moved, though.
41:31One is the old town hall.
41:34It may have received a prize for its beautiful architecture in 1964, but it has to go.
41:42Unfortunately, there is no way of saving the Italian marble and designer staircases, which have all been earmarked for demolition.
41:54But thankfully, the beautiful Karuna Church will be saved.
41:59In fact, they're hoping to move the vast building in one go.
42:08In peace and war, the town of Karuna is forever linked to the mine and its railway line.
42:17The reason for the mega-system, the iron ore, that's always going to be at the heart of the decision
42:23-making process.
42:24That's what the town exists to protect. It's there to get the ore out of the ground and away.
42:33For the past hundred years, the Karuna to Narvik trains have brought over one billion tonnes of iron ore to
42:40the world.
42:42But success came alongside some dark times, proof of which lies in the rubble of Karuna,
42:49in the remains of the Nordau Bridge, in the graveyards of the Polar Line,
42:55and in the sunken wrecks of Narvik's fjords.
43:00However, it is now reborn, and the Arctic railway line is as strong as ever.
43:09The railway was built to carry iron ore, but it's since found fame with tourists since,
43:14who flock to it and its spectacular views alongside the fjords and up across towards the mines.
43:22Today, its iron ore trains have some of the most powerful locomotives in the world.
43:29But with such a precious cargo, who knows what its future holds.
43:34The
43:37The
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