All language subtitles for The Worlds Most Scenic Railway Journeys S02E01 1080p WEB DL H264 BTN_track3_[eng]

BILL NIGHY: Escape with us on a
magical journey

through the Scottish Highlands.

We'll witness some of the world's
most spectacular scenery...

I've seen people literally with
their jaws dropping going...

..travel through landscapes steeped
in heroic saga.

I feel very emotional when I come
back.

There's so much history here.

..and valleys rich in ancient
folklore...

..on a journey that reveals
a living heritage...

..and lasting flavours.

We're all teetotallers here.

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

Have your tickets ready, please.

Money can't buy that.

..before we arrive at Scotland's
legendary capital.

What a fabulous city.

This is no ordinary railway journey.

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

Scotland.

Our journey begins in Inverness.

Once the seat of ancient kings,

today it's the cultural capital
of the Scottish Highlands.

Its central station lies at the
heart of a railway network

that spans the north of Scotland.

Local communities rely on this
transport lifeline...

..powered by a fleet of reliable
diesel engine workhorses...

..including the Class 170 Turbostar,

and hour train, a British Rail Class
43 HST...

..and veteran conductor David is
keen the 9:44 to Edinburgh

leaves bang on time.

WHISTLE BLOWS

It's a route affectionately
known as the Highland Main Line.

See you, take care.

Cheers.

There we go, train's off the
platform, we can close the window.

The first leg of our 187 mile
journey takes us around Culloden,

the site of the last pitched battle
fought on British soil.

Then we enter the Cairngorms
National Park,

stopping at Aviemore,

the gateway to some of Scotland's
finest landscapes.

From here, the train climbs towards
Britain's highest railway pass,

then onwards through glorious Fife
to Burntisland...

..across the magnificent Forth
Bridge

to our destination, Edinburgh.

Have your tickets ready, please.

Our conductor David is no stranger
to the Inverness to Edinburgh.

There we are. Fantastic.

He's been working on Scotland's
railways for almost three decades.

I've worked in ScotRail for 29
years.

I might get to like it sometime.

I do love my job.

Seven minutes after leaving
Inverness...

..and our train crosses one of
Scotland's most iconic landmarks...

..Culloden Viaduct.

1,800 feet long...

..29 arches wide...

..it's the longest stone railway
bridge in Scotland.

Designed 130 years ago by Scottish
engineer Murdoch Patterson,

the viaduct is still admired
by his great-grand-niece Anne-Mary,

three generations on.

It's architecturally perfect.

Because of the way that it
has been constructed,

it's very elegant.

The red sandstone blends
in with the countryside

because it's local stone.

Despite becoming one of Scotland's
most famous viaducts...

..its visionary creator, Murdoch
Patterson,

was never to see a single passenger
cross it.

By the time to find out it just
nearly finished, he was very ill.

He was very anxious to see
the finishing touches

were done correctly and his
assistant organized for him

to cross the viaduct so that he
could give his last orders.

Because it was his last work,

he thought of it
as being his masterpiece.

And after 120 years,

it's still going over...

Oh, here's the train coming.

Have your tickets ready, please.

Thank you.

It reminds me more of Christmas. It
reminds you of Christmas?

Yeah, it reminds me of Christmas.

It's really bumpy.

THEY GIGGLE

You get used to it. You get the sea
legs.

Apparently I walk funny
when I'm walking down the street.

You don't really need alcohol to get
drunk on this job.

Just walk up and down the train a
couple of times.

After crossing the viaduct,

our train completes a giant curve

around one of Scotland's
epic landmarks...

..and site of the last pitched
battle on British soil.

Culloden Battlefield.

These red flags marked the front
line of a huge government army

sent here in 1746 to crush a
rebellion against the British king.

The saga is known as the Jacobite
Uprising.

1,500 Scottish Bravehearts perished
here

in a bloody massacre that lasted
little more than 60 minutes.

But according to battlefield
historian Catriona McIntosh,

what is remembered here to this day

is its impact on the close knit
families of the Highland clans.

Clan regiments, like any regiment,

they know each other, they've
trained together.

But actually, what we're talking
about in these cases is fathers,

sons and grandparents.

So, you know these people.

You have to stand and watch people
you know being devastated.

The mound, that is actually
where the graves are,

you are physically standing where
these men and boys are buried.

And it kind of just hits you.

Even today, the clans, they still
exist and they come on to the field

and they remember this key moment,
this iconic moment in history.

Ian is a direct descendant of one
of the warriors who fought and died

at Culloden and Scotland's
youngest clan chief.

The MacGillivrays and the Clan were
some of the first

to reach the line of battle.

they were first to reach the Redcoat
line.

And Allister MacGillivray was
mortally wounded

and he crawled back here with a
drummer boy from the other side.

He dragged him back to help him,
to this well,

in order to get water for their
wounds

and they were helping
each other out

and this is where they died.

What we do in tribute is, as a wee
boy, I've come here

and I've drank from the well and
we'd bless ourselves,

just in tribute and in commemoration
to our chief and our clan.

And all those who died at Culloden.

BAGPIPES PLAY

I feel very emotional when I come
back to Culloden,

just knowing that my family, my
clan fought here.

There's so much history here.

The battlefield today
is very much alive.

BAGPIPES PLAY

Stunning part of the world.

Love living where we live. Yeah.

You're very patriotic, Millie,
aren't you?

I like the colour tartan.

As our sturdy workhorse

surges through Scotland's historic
landscape...

..t will soon end to one of
Scotland's

most breathtaking national parks...

..the Cairngorms.

We're 30 miles into one of the
world's most scenic railway journeys

through the Scottish Highlands.

Our final destination is Edinburgh.

Every time I go with her, we come
on the train. More relaxing.

Yeah. And I always...

Then granny doesn't have to do all
the work and we get to snuggle up.

Our train now veers south to enter
Cairngorms National Park,

then stops at one of Scotland's most
enchanting stations, Aviemore,

to then begin the long climb
upwards towards Dalwhinnie.

The views up here are stunning.

It doesn't matter what sort of
weather you're in,

what time of year,

it's beautiful scenery.

You get the white, you get blue
of the sky and it is just stunning.

I've seen people literally
with their jaws dropping going...

You know, it's absolutely
fantastic.

For the next two hours,

our train passes through the
spectacular

Cairngorms National Park,

jewel in the crown of the Scottish
Highlands.

Look at that, Jake.

Almost 2,000 square miles wide,

it's bigger than the whole
of Luxembourg

and the largest in the British
Isles.

It also contains some of the
country's most cherished
conservation areas,

rich in wildlife and blanketed in
ancient woodland,

known as the Caledonian Forest.

No-one is more familiar
with the Cairngorms

than local resident Seumas .

My people have been here
for most of the last 600 years.

My surname is Grant,
which is the local clan name.

Seumas spends much of his free time
hiking in the mountains

close to his home.

He's a Gaelic language expert

and likes to sing in his native
language as he walks.

Seumas follows an old cattle droving
road,

where centuries ago livestock
raids were common.

SEUMAS SINGS

Today it leads up to a hill walking
refuge called Ryvoan Bothy,

a farmhouse abandoned at the end of
the 19th century.

During that time, many of the local
Highlanders

worked on Scotland's railways,

including three generations
of Seumas' own family.

I would quite often go up the hills
with my father.

You could actually hear the trains
coming and going.

He would say, "Oh, yes, it's a 2:30
from Perth to Inverness"

or whatever and he knew exactly what
time it would be.

But even stranger tales
abound in the valleys

that surround the railway.

There's a thing which was very
common in the Highlands in the olden
days.

A thing called Second Sight, Darna
Sealladh.

And people...

..certain people could see things
before they actually happened.

Some local elders believed
they had visions

predicting the coming of the railway
itself.

They were seeing strings of lights
going across the moor,

and then every now and then,
they would disappear

and then they would reappear again.

When they built the railway,

they saw that the strings of light
were them.

These were the carriages
going across the moor.

True to Scottish tradition,

even Ryvoan Bothy itself
has its own story.

A tale also connected to the
Highland Line.

During the 1930s, a travelling
passer-by left verses of a poem

pinned to the doorway.

"I shall leave tonight from Euston

"On the 7:30 train

"And from Perth in early morning

"I shall see the hills again.

"I shall see the sunrise gleam

"On the forehead of Ben Rinnes.

"And Strathspey awake from dream.

"And then in dusk of evening

"I shall find once more alone

"The dark water of the Green Loch

"And the pass beyond Ryvoan.

For tonight I leave from Euston

"and I leave the world behind;

"Who has the hills as a lover

"Will find them wondrous kind."

32 miles after leaving Inverness,

our train approaches the enchanting
Aviemore Station.

Constructed almost entirely out of
timber

during the late-19th century,
this Grade A listed station

has changed little since Victorian
times...

..when tourists came here to enjoy
Aviemore's famous mountain views.

Absolutely fantastic.

I love it when it's like this.

It's good for Aviemore.

Hopefully it'll bring some skiers
up,

might bring more people on to the
train, you never know.

Excellent.

While on the platform,

there's always time to drop in to
the Highland Line restaurant

inspired by the railways Victorian
past.

But just out of sight of
this station, hidden away,

the original Highland Line
is coming to life.

This isn't a scene lost in time...

..but a community of passionate
train enthusiasts

from the Strathspey Railway...

..who are restoring some of the
country's most majestic steam
locomotives.

Every year they run these trains
across a ten mile stretch

of heritage railway from Aviemore
to Broomhill.

One day they hope to extend
the route all the way down

to Grandtown-on-Spey.

For now, the locomotives are
undergoing their winter makeover.

Not so much a chore, but a labour
of love

for Strathspey aficionados like
Andrew.

There's a bit of the Thomas The Tank
Engine effect.

Steam tractions are very easy to
understand.

A transparent kind of technology.

You can see how it works.

Whereas with diesels or electric
trains, there's just boxes

and nobody can really see how
it works,

but you can see a steam engine.

You can see the pistons going back
and forward

and the rods driving the wheels
round

and it's an exciting sight
and sound.

The grand old lady of the Strathspey
Railway

is their oldest steam locomotive,
Caledonian number 848.

No-one knows the train like engineer
Doug,

who has been loyally looking after
it for over 20 years.

This engine was one of a class
of about 70 similar locomotives

that the Caledonian rail built
at the end of the 19th century

and they would all be slightly
different.

Some would be lazy, sulky,

known as not particularly good
performers.

Sometimes they want to go too fast.

They're just like people.

A lot of people here call it the
Cali

because that's the shorthand version
of Caledonian Railway,

but I just call it the 828 or the
Old Pest.

Fortunately for the Old Pest,

Dog hasn't lost his passion
for steam trains.

They're demanding machines.

Cali alone requires almost a quarter
of a tonne of coal

and almost 2,000 litres of water to
move just ten mines.

There's romance about them when they
are working.

The smell, the visual that
they have,

smoke and steam belching everywhere.

They're amazing machines.

Soon the trains will be out
of their winter hibernation

and back onto the ten miles of
heritage railway line already
completed...

TRAIN CHOOS

..the Old Pest among them.

Any tickets from Aviemore,
please.

Back on our train, our journey
skirts Insh Marshes...

..an eight square mile bird
sanctuary

on the flood plains of the River
Spey.

It's beautiful, stunning scenery.

It's breathtaking. You've got the
mountains. It's snowing.

The lochs. It's beautiful.

It's even caught the attention
of the wildlife on the train.

That dog's a cocker-spaniel.

As our route heads south, it ascends
deeper...

..and higher into the Cairngorms...

..towards the hamlet of Dalwhinnie,
altitude 1204 feet.

CONDUCTOR: Calling at Dalwhinnie.

With an average recorded temperature
of 6.2 degrees Celsius.

Dalwhinnie is officially the coldest
station in the British Isles...

Thank you. You're welcome.

Have a great time, folks. Cheers.

..but connoisseurs worldwide will
know the name for another landmark

that lies just a few snowy steps
from the platform's edge...

..where they make what is locally
known as The Gentle Spirit...

..whisky.

Jane is one of the many artisans
who work here..

and one of Scotland's growing band
of accomplished female distillers.

It couldn't be more Highlands
than here.

Look at it.

We are the coldest and highest
distillery

and this is typical for this time of
year here at Dalwhinnie.

Jane is also something of a local
historian.

"Dalwhinnie" means "meeting place"

and so cattle drovers would bring
cattle and sheep

and start taking them down the
drove roads.

Oh, I think we have a train coming.

When the railway arrived, it did
bring people into the Highlands

for tourism but the freight was what
really the business end of it was

and cattle and sheep were
transported to market down south,

It also meant that we could get
ingredients in

and product out of the distillery.

One of Jane's many duties here

is to oversee the fermentation
process.

This involves boiling up
milled barley...

..then fermenting it in huge wooden
vats.

The liquid is then distilled twice
in copper stills

before being transferred to oak
barrels for up to 36 years.

But according to Jane, the whisky's
distinctive flavour

doesn't just come from barley and
wood alone...

..it comes from one extra ingredient
only found here.

One of the key things about
Dalwhinnie here is our water supply

and our water comes from a
loch that's about three miles,

as the crow flies, behind the
distillery

and that's called Lochan na
Doire-uaine,

which means the "small loch of the
green thicket".

As it runs down, it runs down a burn

and the burn is lovely and clear and
cold

and the water arrives here freezing
cold

and that allows us to maintain
all the flavours that we want

from Dalwhinnie whisky.

There's lots of things that I
really love about whisky.

I love the colour of it, I love and
seeing it in the glass,

but overall, it's the flavour of
it

and the most special thing
of all is that it's home.

No, we're all teetotallers here.

It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Soon our train will climb to the
highest point

of the railway network in the
British Isles

and some of Scotland's most
unforgettable views.

We're on Scotland's glorious
Highland Railway,

an historic 187 mile voyage to
Edinburgh

across breathtaking mountain
landscapes.

We're coming up to one of the
finest views on the line.

Just have a look. It's absolutely
fantastic.

66 miles after leaving Inverness,

our train ascends to 1484 feet
at Drumochter Pass

before continuing on towards the
Scottish lowlands

and Blair Atholl.

After leaving Dalwhinnie,

more than 100 trains a week make
the long ascent in all weather

towards the highest point on the
British railway network,

Drumochter Pass.

This stunning alpine valley

is right in the heart of an ancient
glaciated landscape.

During the last Ice Age, it sat
under ice thousands of feet thick,

glaciers that sculpted the rocks to
leave behind

the wide sweeping views that exist
today.

Early humans used the pass to travel
from the mountains

to the lowlands beyond.

Today, The Highland Line follows
that same route.

Geoff lives right next to it
at the top of the pass.

You don't get us anywhere else in
the world.

What a beautiful day out. Money
can't buy that.

This is the highest point
on the rail network.

It sits at approximately 1584
feet high.

So, as you can see,

this section here is an incline in
both directions.

During the 1860s, railwaymen
attached extra locomotives to the
regular trains

to help them up the steep gradient
of the pass.

11 tonnes of coal they had to shovel
just to get up this hill.

Now, apparently if they didn't get
up enough speed

as they were coming up the hill,

the train would just grind to a
halt.

For generations, railwaymen lived
in cottages right next to the tracks

here at the pass.

Geoff has now converted them
into a boutique bed-and-breakfast.

One of his first visitors was from a
Drumochter railway family.

He was telling us this story

that he was brought up in these
cottages.

So there was him and his family
and his brother's family

all lived in one tiny little
cottage.

So we brought him into the house
and he got some photographs taken,

which is fantastic, there was a tear
in his eye.

The stories don't end here.

Long before the days of the
railwayman,

this remote Highland pass
was steeped in local folklore.

If you look out of any window along
the front of the house,

you'll see these two mountains.

The big one in the front,

it's name is the Boar of Badenoch.

Badenoch means flooded lands

and he protects this side of the
valley.

The one behind us is the Sow
of Atholl

and she protects the other
side of the valley.

So the train is basically protected
by two proper Scottish boar.

Living 30 feet from the railwayside,

right in the middle of Drumochter
Pass is no ordinary existence

for Geoff and his wife, Fiona.

The trains pass within inches
of their house.

Fiona is actually an archery
instructor

and on occasion we've had guests out
in the back garden playing archery

and , yeah, there was a train
passing

and one of the guests shot the arrow

and I think the train driver
got a bit of a fright.

So he blasted his horn. So we know
not to do that again.

After passing Drumochter, the line
loses altitude,

getting warmer as it descends into
the great wooded valleys of
Perthshire.

Here, our train passes some of
Scotland's great aristocratic
estates.

According to the train historian
John Yellowlees,

the lairds who owned them were the
real force

behind the birth of the Highland
Railway.

At the start of the 19th century,
the Highlands were in a mess.

The place had been ravaged
by the legacy of conflict

when along came the railway era.

Landed interests, Dukes and Earls
and others

wanted the Highlands
to have improved connectivity.

Incredibly, in less than two years,
the railway was complete.

So the original Highland Railway
was born out of a sense of community

from landowners in the Highlands
wishing to create an asset

for the benefit of all who lived
there.

But there was one laird, The Duke of
Atholl,

who at first wasn't so keen
on the railways.

As local museum trustee Jim knows,

without the great
Scottish aristocrats,

there was no hope for a Highland
railway.

The Duke of Atholl owns
all the land,

which is crucial for the railway,

about a 24 mile stretch and initial
approaches in 1845 were refused.

The Duke didn't want any of these
dirty iron horses

crossing his land.

For the likes of the Duke of Atholl,

19th century Scotland was gloriously
lost in time and unspoilt.

It took some persuading to
eventually allow

one of the dreaded "iron horses"
through.

A second attempt in 1860 proved more
successful.

There were sweeteners added.

The company said they would use
stones taken from Tulloch Quarry,

which was owned by the Duke.

So they decorated the bridges
and tunnel entrances

to resemble castles.

The Duke also got his very own
station,

named after his family estate.

A scene hardly changed to this day.

It's a historic line. You know,
there's a few stories.

This is Killiecrankie Gorge.

We'll be going through a tunnel
just a moment,

but after the Battle of
Killiecrankie...

Whey, there we are.

..there was one of the soldiers, he
was fleeing and he came down

and he jumped across that point
in the river just up there.

It's 17 feet.

He was running away and to make
his getaway,

he had to jump across the river,
which is quite a distance...

..just for one jump.

Certainly a lot of folklore and
history about the line.

Within ten minutes of leaving Blair
Atholl,

our train pulls in at our next stop,
Pitlochry.

A charming rural town made
popular by Victorian railway travel.

CONDUCTOR: Ladies and gentlemen, the
service is approaching Pitlochry.

Today, the station has become
a destination in its own right...

..with its story book looks.

Bobby McGraw, along with scores
of volunteers,

runs a charity book shop

housed in the station's original
main building.

When passengers first arrive and
look at the window

it appears really, really small, but
when they walk in the door,

they are absolutely astonished.

It is like stepping into the TARDIS
because it's a small shop

which goes behind, beyond, above.

It goes on and on and on.

Among train travellers in the know,
the station is almost legendary.

Trains pass Pitlochry from as far
away as London.

It's amazing the number of people
I meet who come off the train,

come into the book shop
from all over the world.

I think part of the book shop's
charm is you can sit

and have a cup of coffee and a
shortbread biscuit

made by our volunteer and browse for
as long as you like

and watch the trains whizzing past
in our wonderful Victorian station.

I suppose it is a quirky
little station, really.

I had one woman, she was writing a
novel.

She's wrote a wee passage about the
conductor on the train

in the novel, so somewhere I'm in a
book.

100 miles into the journey,

the Highland Main Line enters the
River Tay valley...

..the start of Scotland's central
belt, known as the Lowlands.

The scenery is stunning.

It's ever changing and it always
looks great.

It's certainly the gateway to a lot
of beautiful places.

It's just magic. I never get tired
of it.

Next, out train charges on towards
Fife...

..where the Highland Railway changed
the course of world history.

It's the final stretch of our four
hour train journey

on Scotland's Highland Railway.

It passes through Fife...

..a magnificent peninsula

hemmed in between the River Tay and
the North Sea.

The route takes us past the seaside
town of Burntisland...

..across the Forth estuary
to our final destination, Edinburgh.

For the first time, passengers get
a glimpse of the coastline

as our sturdy Highland workhorse
shoots past Burntisland.

150 years ago, the train
line terminated here.

Edinburgh, Scotland's capital,

sits on the other side of the five
mile wide Forth estuary,

known as the Firth of Forth.

Victorian engineers came up with a
surprising invention

to get across it...

..as investigated by local historian
Ian.

I'm holding the air and the Ordnance
Survey County Series map

from about 1854.

And I'm standing on the exact spot
of where the railway line ends

and it was here that a very clever
Victorian engineer

called Thomas Bouch invented the
flying bridge.

It's a wee bit like a drawbridge,

where the trains would be run down
and the goods wagons

would be run down onto this bridge

and then it would be adjusted
to the deck of the boat

and the goods wagons would be loaded
on from there.

This was the world's first
roll-on/roll-off ferry.

It was very, very clever.

But the Victorians were about to get
even cleverer,

and in doing so, alter the course of
world history.

During the 1880s, they began
planning the construction

of a super structure so spectacular
that it would dwarf all others...

..and become a landmark that would
come to define Scotland itself...

..the Forth Railway Bridge.

Ian was born close to this steel
colossus...

..he's now its senior manager.

The Forth bridge was definitely the
pinnacle of Victorian engineering.

The biggest bridge ever constructed,

longest span ever constructed,

over a water course which is 150
feet deep at its deepest point,

so an absolute feat of engineering.

The bridge was the biggest
engineering experiment of its day.

Until then, the world's
great superstructures

like the Eiffel Tower were made
of iron,

but the bridge's joint architect,
John Fowler, chose steel instead.

Using 54,000 tonnes of this superior
metal,

bolted together with 6,500 rivets,

he oversaw the construction of a
bridge

that spanned a mile and a half.

This particular feature about the
bridge is a very favourite of mine.

What this does is really shows the
first cantilever in its full
splendour,

going from quite narrow to very
broad, very sturdy.

The bridge is as A shape, which
makes it very, very strong.

After six years in the making,

the longest cantilever bridge ever
built was opened in 1890.

It was dubbed the eighth
greatest wonder of the world.

The bridge is as much a thrill
to me to go today

as it was on day one when I
first came here.

One question we've often thought
about is what gender is the bridge?

There's no question, this is a lady.

This is a very proud lady.

Similar to a ship, that majesty on
the river, on the water.

Definitely a she.

Almost 200 trains cross the Forth
Bridge each day...

..over 70,000 a year...

..and that includes ours.

Finally...

..three and a half hours after
leaving Inverness...

..our train arrives at our
destination...

..Edinburgh Waverley.

For stationmaster Juliet,

this historic station is the perfect
gateway to Edinburgh.

Just a few short steps away above
the station,

Scotland's seat of power, its
capital.

So here we are. This is my
absolutely favourite cityscape.

Such a variety of architecture.

So many different buildings.

So many things to look at. So many
things to see.

Absolute snippet of excellence.

This is Edinburgh to me.

Edinburgh's just such a beautiful
city.

It's a very vibrant, the city. It's
a live city.

It is the city of the world's
biggest festival.

What a fabulous city.

Always walk around with your head
up as much as possible.

You don't want to miss anything.

On our epic 187 mile journey from
Inverness to Edinburgh...

..we have travelled across some
of Scotland's finest landscapes...

..enjoyed its legendary flavours...

..crossed Britain's highest
railway pass...

..and witnessed the joy of steam
trains.

It's a spectacular world-class
railway journey.

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