Original subtitles

Take a seat on the Cambrian line,

and be whisked away on an unforgettable voyage

to a lost world.

We'll take you back in time

to the land of majestic castles...

When you see it in front of you, you realise its greatness.

...and ingenious Victorian engineering.

Many a story has been told on here, on this viaduct.

We'll spend a fabulously old-fashioned day at the seaside...

Love the beach.

And now I've got over the fear of them,

I'm really loving the jellyfish as well.

...drop in at an astonishing make-believe Mediterranean village

on the beautiful coast of Wales...

It's a little pocket of madness, I guess you'd call it.

And welcome the return

of these stunning birds of prey

to their ancient homelands.

We'll meet the people who live and work along this special railway.

I think in Welsh, I do everything in Welsh,

I dream in Welsh - everything.

This is no ordinary railway journey -

this is one of the most scenic railway journeys in the world.

North Wales.

This modest railway station

might seem an unlikely start to our train journey,

but this little town in North Wales

is the gateway to a spectacularly scenic railway line

that can compete with anywhere in the world.

The Cambrian Line begins in the coastal town of Pwllheli

and runs 71 miles to the English border.

It travels past ancient castles,

Wales' highest mountain,

and miles of gorgeous golden beaches

from Barmouth to Aberdovey.

The train turns inland to historic Machynlleth,

and then passes through Caersws,

a shrine to Welsh poetry,

before our final destination, Shrewsbury.

This run is one of the most beautiful lines

that you will ever be on.

I mean, it is stunning.

It hits the coast, it goes through the hills,

it is magnificent.

Archaeologist Graham can often be found excavating Roman remains.

But the other love of his life is the history of his native Wales.

This line starts in the early 19th century.

There are a lot of small railways throughout North Wales

which amalgamate to become the Cambrian Railway,

and these lines were primarily for exporting slate,

getting slate from the quarries to the coast,

to be exported into England and to other parts of the world.

Welsh slate was highly valued as far back as Roman times.

But it was the Victorian house-building boom

that inspired the Welsh to move the slate by rail

to cope with the demand.

TANNOY: 'We will shortly be arriving at Criccieih.

'Thank you.'

We've only travelled eight miles down the line,

but it's worth getting off at the seaside town of Criccieth

to see this awe-inspiring medieval castle.

It's been inspiring artists for years,

even the great JMW Turner.

Sitting atop a dramatic rocky headland,

it played an important part

in Wales' constant struggle for independence from the English.

It's an iconic symbol of Welshness.

This castle, initially built by the Welsh,

later conquered by the English,

becomes a sign of oppression -

as do many of the other castles in North Wales -

this ring of steel that was set up by Edward I

to compress the Welsh into their mountains and not let them out.

Even though it's later taken by the English, it's a Welsh castle,

and it'll always be a Welsh castle.

The Cambrian Line wends its way along this sparkling coast.

Having spent 20 years working on its maintenance,

every inch of the route is familiar to Trevor.

Although I'm a retired railwayman,

I've travelled the railways throughout Europe

and nobody can argue with me

that this is probably the best railway line, certainly in Europe.

The scenery changes

near enough on a monthly basis.

Next stop is the town of Porthmadog...

...or was that "Porthma-DOG"...

DOG BARKS

...a town that seems to have a large population

of train-loving canines.

Thanks to the myriad of rail lines

built to transport slate from the quarries down to the port,

this isn't the only station in Porthmadog.

Across town, there's a blast from the past,

a station just for steam trains.

These narrow-gauge routes

are run by a whole army of steam enthusiasts.

Steve is the fireman today

in charge of getting this engine ready to go.

Oh, I love the teamwork, the people.

It's a group of people coming together from all walks of life,

working together in a passion that they love.

All the hard graft is done at Boston Lodge,

the oldest such engineering works in the world.

These mighty, time-honoured locomotives

can burn up to a ton of coal an hour,

depending on speed and the gradient of the track.

They take around two hours to light from cold to operating pressure.

When I was a kid,

I just dreamt of going on the footplate, once,

of a steam engine,

and here I am doing this

and, every time I come, I get a huge thrill.

There's nothing to beat it.

Richard's day job is in a hospital burns unit in Stockport.

But today he's a volunteer in charge of the fire box.

In the real world,

driver Paul is a retired college lecturer.

He's been escaping here for almost 50 years.

I don't do this all the time, I do this, erm...

two or three days a month, something like that.

When I can escape from my wife and do it.

And what does your wife say? You'll have to cut that bit out!

THEY LAUGH

If you like, this is my mistress, this is.

At least she knows where I am when I'm doing this.

At the Harbour station,

passengers can buy a ticket

to ride the Ffestiniog Line to Blaenau

or the Welsh Highland Railway up to Carnarvon.

On this glorious trip back in time,

you can enjoy a taste

of old-fashioned, first-class Welsh service.

A still cold water.

Still water. And Welsh rarebit.

Welsh Rarebit. As it comes, sir, or with onions?

At the village of Rhyd Ddu, it's time to change trains.

You can't come all this way

and not take a trip up Wales' highest mountain, Snowdon.

Next, our Cambrian Railway adventure

transports us to a magical Mediterranean wonderland

built on the coast of Wales.

We're back on the glorious Cambrian Line.

A voyage that takes us through the stunning scenery of North Wales

between the sea and the mountains.

A short hop from Minffordd station,

we step into a totally different world.

This is Portmeirion,

a fairy-tale village

created a century ago

by the eccentric architect Clough Williams-Ellis.

Location manager Meurig is passionate about the place.

I find ii incredibly inspiring here

because, you know, one man had this vision and he did it.

You know, he'd waited 20 years to find the right site to do this

and he bought it for £5,000,

a loan from the Midland Bank,

and I don't think any bank would ever give a loan

to buy and build something like this again

but, at that time, they did,

and he then spent 50 years building it.

Clough Williams-Ellis had a playful approach to architecture

and loved to mix the new with the old.

He rescued buildings from demolition,

like this Georgian bath house from war-damaged Bristol,

which he transported to Portmeirion stone by stone.

The beauty of this

was the proximity to the rail line -

all these people were coming here,

before cars were common and easier to get hold of,

people come by train.

It's a little pocket of madness, I guess you'd call it.

But all the mad details need constant maintenance.

Hi, Nige. Hi, Meurig.

How's it going? OK, thank you. Well done.

Nigel Simmons has been the resident artist at Portmeirion

since 1984.

This wall is new.

So, from over there,

you can see a big blank wall,

if I hadn't painted it.

So now I'm just trying to camouflage it

and make it look like the rest of the foliage.

What I like about coming here and doing things,

is that they're all different.

Like these top windows of the terrace of housing there,

they're not windows, they're just painted on.

The bottom ones are,

but the top ones are false windows.

And Nigel has become infamous for pushing back his deadlines.

You'll be finishing soon the night?

Uh... I don't know what time it is.

It's nearly midday.

Oh, another half an hour and I'll jack it in.

When I first started here, I started 9-5.

And I just...

Bits I did...

When I came back the next day,

the bits I did between 3pm and 5pm were not very good,

so I had to redo it.

So, what I did then, was jack it in at three o'clock in the afternoon,

but then I found all I did in the afternoon wasn't very good.

So now I jack it in at lunchtime.

You keep threatening to retire, don't you, Nigel? Oh, yes.

That's right.

I've been threatening to retire since a long time.

But they won't let me.

Well, no. That's because, as I keep telling Nige,

it's like the Hotel California, isn't it?

You know, you can check out any time you like,

but you can never leave. Never leave, yes.

Unlike Nigel, we have no problem leaving,

and we're soon safely back on the train,

heading for Harlech...

...with retired railwayman Trevor

and his fond memories of childhood journeys.

It frightens me when I think

how long I've been travelling on the train.

But you never get bored of it.

Having the schoolchildren,

I think that brings you back down to earth sometimes.

We all think we all know everything,

and then you get the youngsters that'll tell you things

you never even thought of.

We're coming into Harlech now,

1957 the school was built and I attended the school there.

I travelled every day back and forward,

so that was a 21-22 mile journey every day.

The railway line passes directly underneath

the splendid Harlech Castle.

The castle sits on the Harlech Dome,

this great geological formation in front of us,

which sits on the end of the Rhinogydd mountains.

It's said that this is one of the oldest rock formations in the world.

When the castle was built in the 13th century,

the sea lapped at its foot.

But since then, the water has retreated.

Harlech Castle is a wonderful castle

built by a Frenchman working for Edward I.

This great bastion of power

dominates the landscape,

with views in every direction.

The castle is then snatched from the English

by the Welsh rebel leader Owain Glyndwr.

Harlech Castle, once a symbol of power for Edward,

becomes a symbol of Welsh identity.

And to imagine the bastions

in the towers behind us

having Welsh banners and Welsh flags

and ensigns flying all around,

it must have formed an incredible symbol for Welshness

and for the Welsh people to rally around.

It's time for a pint at the pub by the railway line

at the foot of this great fortress

which held out for seven years in a spectacular siege.

It ended in 1468,

and it's a very proud moment in Welsh history.

Lloniannau.

This siege was so epic,

it's filled the hearts of every Welshman.

The captain of the castle was a Welshman,

it's got a Welsh garrison,

and so this siege became immortalised in Welsh song.

SONG: Men of Harlech # Harlech cyfod dy faneri

# Gwel y celyn enyn yn I

# Meion wyr oll I wnaedd I

# Cmru f0 am byth

# Aed y waedd ac aed y weddi

# I bob cwr o'n gwlad uchelfri

# Nes adsinia yr eiryri

# Cymru f0 am byth

# Arwyr, sawdwyr sydyn

1% RhuKh rwyn at y sewn

# Gyrwn ef I ffoi o nant

# A bryn a phant a Dyffryn

# Chwifiwn faner goruchafiaeth

# Gorfoleddwn yn ei al aeth

# Clywir llef ein buddugol iaeth

1% Cymru f0 am byKh. 1%

APPLAUSE

The train hugs the stunning coastline for the next 12 miles.

In Cardigan Bay you may even see seals and dolphins,

until you arrive in Barmouth,

a place where the sea meets the mountains

and the Victorian engineers had a mighty problem to solve -

how to build a lifeline linking the communities

on each side of the estuary.

This is the famous Barmouth Viaduct.

It's now 152 years old.

My late father, he worked on the viaduct before me,

I did spend 20 years on this viaduct,

in all sorts of weathers,

and believe me, on a late Saturday night, early Sunday morning,

when there's an east wind coming down the river,

doesn't matter how well you're wrapped up,

it's like a knife, the wind can be.

Originally there were shelters

so locals could take advantage of the charms of the estuary

whatever the weather.

When we used to have the shelters as kids,

we played on here, the fishing from here,

start your early courting as youngsters,

you'd come on the viaduct with those shelters here.

Many a story has been told on here,

on this viaduct.

All right, come and see my baby.

This is the... This is what it's all about.

The viaduct has a swing bridge

which used to open to allow large boats to pass through,

and Trevor was one of the railwaymen tasked with its operation.

We would take out four little lengths of rail,

one on each end here,

and the same on the opposite side.

We would get a key from the signal box in Barmouth

which protected the railway line so there's no trains come,

and we'd put the key in here, unlocked it,

and we could pull the two levers forward,

cos the levers pull the boats out to allow the viaduct to turn.

And this is where you'd have your handles,

three or four men - one here, one there on the other side -

and that's how the whole viaduct

or the whole span turned round, that way.

Opening it was straightforward,

but closing it could sometimes take a lot longer.

Problem being, in the middle of the summer,

once you'd opened it, the heat built up, the metal expanded,

and you could never close it immediately.

If it was a very hot day,

you may be there several hours,

and there'd be a welder

perhaps just chapping off a little bit here and there

so he could get the bridge closed.

I can remember, as a youngster,

we only used to have the one train on a Sunday,

it would come in first thing in the morning,

and same in Barmouth, so the bridge could be opened,

and the train would come back out at six o'clock at night.

If it had been a very hot day,

the train never come back out of Barmouth,

cos you couldn't close the bridge again.

It's not a problem these days,

as the bridge hasn't been open for more than 20 years.

The views as you cross the river

are truly breath-taking.

But it seems you can have too much of a good thing,

according to these two retired train drivers.

I used to work on it for years,

I used to enjoy it,

it's especially all right in the summer,

bit rough in the winter.

Just going once and back is nice, have a nice day.

But, you know...

when we had to do it twice, it was a bit, like...

It were a bit boring and monotonous, weren't it?

You know, you're stopping in all these 27 stops.

Here the train squeezes

between the sand dunes, and even a golf course,

until it reaches the ever-popular seaside resort Aberdovey,

with it's fantastic, unspoiled sandy beach

stretching for miles.

There's nine of us. There's my mum.

When my children were young,

Mum and I used to bring them every year.

We used to come and stay in a caravan here.

So now that we've got grandchildren

and Mum's got great-grandchildren,

we've decided to carry on the tradition

and bring the new ones along.

The water is the clearest water I've swum in in ages.

It's beautiful, and I love the beach

and, now I've got over the fear of them,

I'm really loving the jellyfish as well.

It's all the fun of the seaside here.

But on the grassy side of the tracks,

the sand gives way to hard work.

David is the third generation of his family to farm this land.

"Taid" is a grandfather in Welsh.

So, Taid came here in 1926,

year of the General Strike,

and then they stayed on here till 1957

when my mum and dad took over.

Taid, he farmed with horses,

so he didn't have a tractor,

but he'd use a train.

But a lot of livestock from this area was moved by train,

cattle and sheep.

They're all organic.

Here's the bull here, his name is Glyn.

He's very calm, which is a good thing in a bull.

They've all got names.

Livvy, George.

George is far more vicious than any other of the cows here,

so we give her plenty of space.

If I wanted to move them, I'd call them.

I just do it a couple of times.

I'm sure it's been used since ancient times.

You know, I'd say...

HE CALLS THEM

And they'd follow.

They think I'm joking now, cos they're happy here.

I love the estuary,

it changes colour and it changes shape every day,

every hour, every minute.

The trains arrive -

enigmatic, the way it hugs the estuary there.

Somebody had the vision to build that line,

and it's not an easy place to build -

there's five tunnels along this piece,

goes through the golf course as well.

And there's a friend of mine playing golf

and he hits the ball- bang - and hits the train.

The train driver stops to remonstrate

and my friend shouts back at him,

"if you'd been on time he wouldn't have hit you!"

True story.

My grandfather, Taid,

if he could hear the train in Dovey Junction,

it would mean that the wind was up in the east,

and it would be one of the factors he'd use

to decide whether he was going to cut hay or not -

my father the same.

As it has done for over 100 years,

the train continues to mark the rhythm of time

for all the people living and working along its route.

Our next stop is so remote

that it's only one person's commute to work.

The wide Dovey Estuary was a big obstacle

for the engineers working on the next part of the Cambrian Line.

A bridge was deemed too difficult to build.

Instead, the line was routed

along the north side of the estuary

from Aberdovey to Dovey Junction station.

The line then splits -

one branch running southwest to Aberystwyth,

and the other running eastwards

to Machynlleth and England.

Dovey Junction appears to be in the middle of nowhere.

And today only one person gets off.

I am pretty much the only commuter at Dovey Junction.

And if I go anywhere else,

the train staff like to point out to me

that I'm not at my correct station.

We have a collection of wildlife here that is quite unique.

There's not many commutes

where you could count 15 white egrets, or spot three herons,

or come past a collection of shell ducks every morning.

And the way with the tides on the saltmarshes as well,

you never know quite what you're going to get.

Kim's commute is remarkable in another way, too.

Her journey takes her back into Wales' wild past

where magnificent birds of prey flew free across the country.

A short bike ride from the station,

and Kim clocks in at the Cors Dyfi Wildlife Reserve.

So, through this window here,

you can see right the way across to the osprey nest.

When the ospreys come back each year,

it's an absolutely amazing feeling,

just to know they've made it safely through their migration,

they've made that journey back from West Africa,

and then they're here, and then we look forward to the eggs,

to the chicks and to those chicks then going on

and hopefully starting nests of their own in a few years' time.

We just have one breeding pair here,

they've got three chicks at the moment.

There are five breeding pairs in Wales,

so very much a recovering population.

In the 1990s, ospreys were extinct in the UK.

In the 1950s, they began to recover in Scotland

and it's not until recent years,

20 years ago, that they've begun to recover in Wales.

They were persecuted and their habitat destroyed,

which meant we had no breeding pairs left.

The male osprey, just about to jump onto the perch out here,

with a fish in his talons.

The osprey barely look up from their fish dinner

when the train passes their nest.

These mighty birds don't need permission to cross the track,

but everything else on two or four legs does.

Even though it might look as though

the trains can take care of themselves

as they trundle their way along the line,

in fact, they, and everyone crossing the track,

are totally dependent on this control room,

the most hi-tech in the UK.

Machynlleth Signalling Centre.

One car. One minute.

Yes, you're safe to cross the railway now.

ALARM WAILS Thank you. Ta-ra.

That was Borthwen Farm.

It's got quite a large caravan park there.

One of the users wanted permission

to go across the railway line.

Despite its sophisticated equipment,

this nerve centre still requires...a human

to tell people when it's safe to cross on foot.

Machynlleth Signalling Centre.

One minibus. One minute.

Hold on, I'll just see where the train is.

Just bear with me.

No, it's not safe to cross.

There's a train coming towards you from the Barmouth direction.

Can you wait for that train to pass you, please?

Thank you. Ta-ra.

Some months of the year,

we move more people across our railway line

than we move along our railway line.

We've got open access now to the coast,

moving the sheep for shearing,

the caravaners.

It gets very busy now - school holidays are always busy.

That's fine. OK. Bye.

Because it's a single line,

we have to have two bits of track

in somewhere like Harlech here,

where we've got a crossing point.

So each train comes in and waits for the other train to pass it,

and then it can carry on on its journey.

If a train is late, if it's late coming in,

then the other one will be late leaving as well.

This now is where two trains are actually crossing as we speak.

It is a challenge to keep it running,

because we have so many things that trip us up, you know.

It's just anything from a large group of golfers

turning up at Harlech, for instance, with their golf carts.

It takes three minutes

to get them on a train when we allow two -

and that's enough to put us out one minute.

Running the Cambrian Line is a very exacting business...

TANNOY: 'We are now at Machynlleth.'

...but Carl loves his job.

The people who work on the railway are all very talented,

they enjoy their job

and it's a pleasure to be amongst them all day, to be honest.

I'm a very lucky man.

The control centre is based here, in Machynlleth,

which is a very special place.

Some of the town's inhabitants are still reeling

from the shock decision in 1955

to make the city of Cardiff the capital of Wales,

and not Machynlleth.

We see before us here

the Parliament House,

the Senedd-Dy,

Owain Glyndwr, 1404.

Where he called two from each comote in Wales

and he was crowned Prince of Wales.

What more cultural heritage

would you want than that?

It's massive.

Here we are.

This picture shows Owain Glyndwr crowned with his scepire.

He transformed himself from rebel leader

to ruler of a virtually, at that time, independent Wales.

Owain Glyndwr hammered the English

up on Hyddgen Mountain.

1401, he hammered them.

Even bigger hammerings than they get at Twickenham.

He hammered them.

He came down the mountain to Machynlleth

and he felt so sure

that this place should be the first parliament of Wales.

And it was, and it is known as the ancient capital of Wales.

MUSIC: "Highland Cathedral"

There is nothing the town likes more

than Owain's modern counterpart, Prince Charles,

the present Prince of Wales,

to pay a visit.

We're leaving the realm of princes

and heading to a station that's a shrine to its past manager,

who loved his job and his poetry.

We're making our way down the Cambrian Line...

and our next stop is a village

that's steeped in the music and words

so important to Welsh tradition.

THEY SPEAK IN WELSH

Delma Thomas is a retired teacher

who runs an organisation devoted to keeping her native language alive.

I'm very proud to be Welsh.

I think in welsh, I do everything in Welsh,

I dream in Welsh - everything,

through the medium of the Welsh language.

I do speak English a little bit.

But I prefer speaking in Welsh

and I translate as I'm going along now.

There's no longer a station master at Caersws.

But the spirit of one man

who spent almost 20 years running the station

is still very much present.

Ceiriog. That's a Welsh... Very famous Welsh poet.

John Ceiriog Hughes.

He was station master here

and he collected old Welsh tunes

and he wrote very many of his poems

to fit onto these tunes as songs

and they've become very, very popular.

I mean, if you showed him that shed,

he could make a song about it.

You know, he could write about anything and everything.

The old ticket office on the other side of the track

has hardly been touched

since the days of John Ceiriog Hughes.

It's as it was.

I think it's the same carpet.

THEY LAUGH

He would sell the tickets there for you.

And this is where he was sitting down.

Had the fire, here, lit.

All his cupboards and the shelves there

with all the things that he needed to get the service going.

This is a tangible connection, isn't it, with Ceiriog?

It's wonderful. Wonderful.

Oh, yes. Now, then.

They're still storing a few things here.

He probably sat down here

and got his pencil out to write his poems.

He used to boil a kettle on there

and have his cup of tea in here.

Would it be tea or would he have something stronger?

Well, yes.

I mustn't tell tales about him, must I?

He allegedly did like his tipple,

I'm not quite sure which brand.

And then he adopted, shall I say,

the Bohemian lifestyle.

A shopkeeper was complaining one day

that he was two weeks late getting two bags of flour

because Ceiriog was so involved in writing the poetry,

he forgot to put them on the train.

This now-celebrated poet,

sometimes called the Wordsworth of Wales,

is buried close by.

He died in poverty at the age of just 54.

John Ceiriog Hughes.

Born 25th September 1832

and died 23rd April 1887.

And then this is one he himself wrote,

for his own epitaph.

“Carotid eiflau cerddorcfl' - carodd iéwdd,

"Carodd fyw'n naturiol,

"Carodd gerdd yn angerddol:

"Dyma ei lwch, a dim lol"

"He loved musical words, he loved poets,

"he loved to live naturally,

"He loved poems passionately:

"This is his dust, no nonsense."

He's got a great sense of humour. Yes.

You know, here's my dust and no nonsense,

you know, that's the end of it.

Back on the train, and we'll soon be leaving Wales behind.

The movements of all trains coming in to Shrewsbury

on the Cambrian Line are controlled here.

This is currently the world's largest mechanical signal box

that's left in operation.

There were, of course, others that were bigger

but, as this technology

has been closed down and got rid of,

this is now the largest left in the world.

Unlike the hi-tech setup at Machynlleth,

this remarkable historic control room

is 117 years old and still going strong.

Jamie is a Signalman who revels in the fact

that he's still using the old technology.

BELLS RINGS

I love the fact that you're sort of dealing with stuff

that's happening right in front of you.

You're dealing with mechanical signals,

mechanical points, watching the trains go past.

It's not all happening on a computer screen.

So that's for that freight train there,

which will now pass the box on its way to near Shotton,

demarcates junction.

Each colour has a different meaning.

White levers are no longer in use, regrettably.

Black levers are the points.

So that's where we change the direction of the tracks

and route the trains in different directions.

Blue levers lock the points

and then the red levers are the signals themselves.

I actually started my signalling career

as a volunteer on a steam railway

and the job that I'm doing now is exactly the same.

BELL DINGS TWICE

Basically, we communicate from box to box by bell code -

it's a bit like Morse code, it's absolutely unequivocal,

you can't mistake a bell code

in the way a phone call could be mistaken.

Those two beats on the bell then

was Abbey Forgate telling me that we've got a train

entering the section between me and him, coming toward me, on the line.

So I acknowledge it by sending two beats back to him

and I move the indicator over to "Train On Line"

and, when it gets to me, I will tell him

that it's got to me, complete with its red lights on the back

and then we're ready to start again.

When you're here sort of in the late evening

and the sunlight's falling on it,

you think, wow, this has been here

for 116-odd years now

and, you know, we're just the latest in a long line

of signalmen to be working it.

BELL DINGS

BELL DINGS THREE TIMES

Jamie has given our train the all clear

to proceed into Shrewsbury station.

Our glorious journey has taken us from grand mountains

to bastions of Welsh historic battles,

steam-train heaven...

and the turquoise-blue waters of Aberdovey and beyond.

A nostalgic voyage through Wales' heartland

on the great Cambrian Line.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media