The Peak Express
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00:00Britain is a country that owes a great deal to its rail empire. For a hundred years the
00:24railways dominated the development of this country, the network that supported a global
00:29superpower. But today our island is home to 10,000 miles of disused lines, a silent
00:39network of embankments, platforms and viaducts. For me and many others they've become a
00:49perfect platform for exploring the country on foot. I've come to an area close to where
01:13I grew up, the Peak District in Derbyshire. This is Peak Rail, one of the country's many
01:18steam heritage lines. Today it attracts over 40,000 visitors a year and most of those are
01:24tourists. But once upon a time this route was filled with buxom, busy express trains.
01:38Almost a hundred and forty years ago Victorian railway engineers were set the unlikely task of
01:43creating a mainline between London and Manchester that ran straight through these twisting
01:48valleys and rocky hills. Today that same route is a favourite for walkers, climbers and those
01:56just seeking to escape the surrounding hubbub of the Midlands. I'm following a line today that
02:07cuts right through the heart of the peaks, through its geology, through its history,
02:11through everything. I'm trying to find out why on earth anyone would choose to build a
02:15main railway line through this landscape. My walk today is known as the Monsell Trail,
02:29an eight mile route from Bakewell almost as far as Buxton. And this popular walk owes its
02:36existence to the Midland Railway. In 1867 they completed their line from London to Manchester.
02:43It became part of Britain's booming rail empire. In 1914 this was how the country's rail map looked.
02:51But after World War Two, when the railways were nationalised, the situation went into
02:56reverse. To date Britain has lost an incredible 10,000 miles of railway. But just like the
03:03Monsell Trail, many of those miles are perfect for a day out on foot. So that's the map. But
03:14before I set off, let's take a closer look at the route I'll be following. Leaving Bakewell,
03:23I'll head north across rolling farmland dominated by the local estates of Hassep Hall and Chatsworth
03:29House. Turning west, the railway headed to the village of Great Longston, once with its very own
03:37station, a facility shared with neighbouring Thornbridge Hall. The drama of the Wye Valley
03:46soon takes over, and for the Midland Railway this meant building the glorious Monsell Viaduct.
03:51At Cressbrook Village, I'll follow the Riverside Path for a while whilst the railway disappears deep
04:00under the Derbyshire Hills. Rejoining the old line at Lytton Mill, I'll follow it on a straight run
04:08to the unusual Double Viaduct at Millersdale. This is now limestone country. Old quarries are
04:17obvious amongst the hills as the Wye Valley gets deeper and enters the gorge at Cheedale.
04:25The end of my walk is simply stunning. A dramatic natural corridor through rock,
04:30and a junction where trains from London turned either to Buxton or to Manchester.
04:35This quiet rural ending once rumbled with the sound of locomotives, a fitting end to my first
04:43railway walk. Back in Bakewell, my walk starts in a small industrial estate on the outskirts of town.
04:53Why here? Well, this was Bakewell Station, of course, and it's where I'm meeting Christian
05:01Walmer, one of the country's leading authors on transport history. How much did the arrival of
05:05the railway change Bakewell? No, I mean, this gave people access to St Pancras, just two and a half
05:11hours away, and Manchester about three quarters of an hour away. The railway transformed places
05:17like Bakewell from sleepy little towns into bustling places that were really part of the
05:24Victorian world. For example, I've got this book on the Bakewell Show, and this shows the trains
05:29in the 1950s, and there's 22 extra trains just within a few hours in the morning from places
05:35like Leicester and Manchester and Newcastle and all that, just bringing in, they brought in 40,000
05:41people to the Bakewell Show. So without the railway, that was completely impossible. It does seem a
05:47pretty strange idea, though, in the first place, to try and run a rail network through the peaks,
05:52through the Peak District. You know, why that plan? Yes, the railway wasn't built like it would be
05:58today, with the government saying, let's build a railway line there, and basically getting planning
06:02permission to do it. It was really built by competing railway companies who would try and
06:08outdo each other. The Midland wanted to have its own line through to London. That was the
06:13actually crucial point, and so it decided to build a line, and it had to find somewhere to build it,
06:19and the Peak District seemed a fairly obvious place to do it. Of course, it gave a fantastic, scenic route.
06:24Why did the line close? It was so important to Bakewell. Well, in the 1950s and the 1960s, British
06:30Railways was losing a lot of money, and the government appointed a certain Dr. Richard
06:37Beeching to be in charge of the railways, and he produced his famous report, which was called
06:43Reshaping of Britain's Railways, and he decided that basically about half the railway should shut
06:50down, and several thousand stations as well, and this was one of them. Now, I suspect on my railway
06:56walks across this series, I'm probably going to encounter quite a few Beeching enemies. Yes, well,
07:02Beeching did cut a lot of railways, but, you know, there is one advantage. They've given us fantastic
07:07walks. Which is good for me. Absolutely. And so my first railway walk begins. As the line heads north, I
07:16enter an area of fine country estates. The Dukes of Devonshire and Rutland were both keen to make
07:23use of the new railway, so long as it didn't upset the tranquility of their country seats.
07:27Up the road from here, though, the Devonshires of Chatsworth always had the protection of being a
07:34good couple of miles from the line. You can just catch a glimpse through those trees of another
07:41fine Derbyshire country manor, and I'm sure it's got perfectly landscaped gardens. That is Thornbridge
07:48Hall. There's been a private estate here outside the village of Great Longstone since the 1100s.
07:56In the past 200 years, it's passed through the hands of several entrepreneurs, many of whom have
08:03been keen to emulate nearby ducal estates, acquiring panelling, household items, and even a fountain
08:09from the likes of Clumber Park and Chatsworth. But unlike the Duke of Devonshire, the owners of
08:17Thornbridge Hall had the advantage of being right next to the railway line. This actually feels like
08:24a real railway station. You almost want to look behind you because you half expect a train to be
08:29coming. But at Great Longstone, it's the building next door to the station that raises a few questions.
08:36It was once part of Thornbridge Hall, so who better to ask than the present owner of the Thornbridge
08:42estate and a local businessman, Jim Harrison. What on earth is this magnificent building doing
08:50plonked right next door to a pretty ordinary-looking railway station? It was the idea of one George
08:54Jobson Marples, and having built the hall across the road, he decided he'd build himself a railway
08:59station. Build himself a railway station? Oh yes, he didn't want to mix with the ordinary folk. So this man
09:03was quite a dude in his day. He was indeed. He made lots and lots of money in steel and being a
09:07barrister and decided to move out to Derbyshire and be a bit of a gentleman. So what was his thinking
09:11behind this building? That he just didn't want to walk 500 yards away? He didn't want to go to the
09:18little ordinary station down there, so he thought he'd build himself something here where his staff
09:22could come, but he could actually put his carriages up through the entranceway there, and he could get
09:28out at his leisure, wait in his waiting rooms, and then move the train just a few yards up so he could
09:32get on personally. Now you've got some pictures of him, let's see how handsome he was. This is a picture of one of
09:38Marple's weekend parties, where he's got all his friends around for a shooting party. You see them all
09:42posing with their guns, and this is the man himself. He's not a great looker, is he? But he's got something
09:47about him. He's a bit of a toad of Toad Hall. That's the man. Lots of ladies in there as well. Well, he's one of
09:52his girlfriends could have been in there because he had quite a number apparently. He's a bit of a lad.
09:56And let's have a look at the building itself. So that's the building as it was being put up. These
10:00are all the builders and his foremen who were running the thing for him. Look at the builders in
10:04the day, I mean they were posh, they were almost wearing dickie bows. Oh yes, they've all got ties and hats on.
10:08In relation to the actual railway, how do we date this building? It's probably about 30 to 40 years
10:13after the railway came by. This was was put up as recently as 1900. It may look a lot older, but he
10:18was copying an older style. Oh lovely, well I wonder if you don't mind, will you take me down to the
10:22station platform? Sure, absolutely. And we can imagine how it would have been for George and his ladies
10:26in that day. Yes, off we go. So he actually got the train to stop there and then here. That's right,
10:36that's right, just a few hundred yards, not even that. Right, well I'm going to go a few
10:41hundred yards that way. Okay. Jim, thank you very much. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
10:45Thanks for telling me all about Mr Marple. It's been a pleasure. Bye-bye. Cheerio.
10:52With two stations past, my walk reaches a point where it begins to change in character.
10:57The gently rolling fields begin to run out as the gritstone of Bakewell turns into classic
11:03Peak District limestone. And for the railway, that required some serious engineering.
11:14The peaks between here and Buxton meant that this part of the Midland Railway included six tunnels.
11:19Now who wants to walk through long dark tunnels when you've got all this splendid National Park
11:23around you? Well nobody, but I felt to really understand the history of this railway walk
11:28that I should. So I picked the longest one and I phoned one of the National Park's wardens.
11:33Steve, I said, will you hold my hand?
11:38Hiya Steve. Hi Gillian. Thank you for showing me the dark side. I need this I suppose. You certainly
11:43do. From now on in there could be some loose rocks. Ah right, okay. I shall follow your lead then. Very
11:47good. The headstone tunnel is sadly closed off to the everyday walker. The odd guided tour takes
11:53place, but for the most part it is a dark and silent world, largely untouched since Dr Beeching's
11:59axe came down. So obviously we don't go straight into the tunnel. No, we have a cutting first and
12:06then we reach the tunnel. It's very beautiful Steve. It's a shame that not everybody could do
12:11this of course. No, but you can see we've got rocks like this one which do occasionally come down,
12:15so that's the reason that the general public aren't allowed in. That's a beauty. Now you're
12:19not telling me my hard hat's going to help. I don't think it would help very much with that one
12:22though. Imagine though if the trains were running and something of that size fell onto the track.
12:28It would be disaster. That would have caused some problems and I'm sure there were chaps in here who
12:32checked it daily to make sure they weren't on the track. The cutting gets deeper and deeper as you
12:37walk further into the new limestone surroundings, but as the hills got higher the builders of the
12:43Midland Railway were left with only one course of action. And there she is up ahead. The tunnel?
12:51The tunnel.
13:02Wow. There we go, headstone tunnel. It's big.
13:14Steve, do me the honours. He pressed it.
13:18And how long is it? We've got 533 yards to walk. Right, we'd better get going. In the dark.
13:27And these are presumably little cubby holes just to... That's where the men walking on the line
13:32would have had to stand out of the way when the trains came through. The thing that strikes you
13:36most inside the headstone tunnel is its immense height and width. Easily enough space for two
13:43large express trains to pass each other at full steam. We're right in the middle of the tunnel
13:51now. There's a shaft of light at that end and I can't see anything at the other end. 120 feet of
13:57limestone above me. And if you look down here, this is the actual surface that the railway tracks
14:05ran on. Come on, Steve. Oh, look at our big shadows.
14:13It's hard to imagine a more disused railway line than this. The headstone tunnel is a ghostly
14:20relic of one of the country's main lines. A giant structure that symbolises the beaching era.
14:28Ah, the big doors at the other end. I'm quite pleased to see these, actually.
14:32Let's see what we've got. Now, what can I expect?
14:37Well, we're going to emerge 80 feet above the river. Oh, don't look at the light.
14:46A completely different landscape. Well, Steve, thank you for my sneaky little walk through the
14:52tunnel and thank you for leaving me at such a magnificent point as well. It's truly beautiful
14:56here, isn't it? For a hundred years, this was the moment when trains from London would have
15:02burst out from the darkness, with passengers enjoying one of the most extraordinary stretches
15:07of line in the country. But it's the view looking down on the viaduct that has become
15:15one of the most famous images of Britain's lost rail empire. That pub was built originally for
15:23the railway workers, but of course there aren't many of those left to keep it going anymore,
15:26are there? Now, it's like the Peak District's honey trap for
15:30tourists and photographers and walkers. I've been there many times myself.
15:38Not a bad spot.
15:42As with so many industrial developments, though, this view wasn't always held in such regard.
15:48John Ruskin, poet, author and general social critic of the 1800s, once moaned that
15:54the valley is gone and the gods with it, and now every fool in Buxton can be in Bakewell
15:59in half an hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.
16:11To be fair to Ruskin, though, with the tracks gone, there's a strange romance and beauty
16:15about the mellowed remains of the railway.
16:22From the flat-bottomed valley of Monsaldale, the railway soon runs into one of the old
16:26industrial centres of the Peaks.
16:31Cressbrook is dominated by the enormous buildings of the old cotton mill.
16:38At the peak of its output, workers were brought into Cressbrook on the railway.
16:42Workers were brought into Cressbrook on the railway,
16:45some arriving each week all the way from St Pancras.
16:52You can still make out the bell on the top of the building, but it rather looks as if
16:57yesterday's factory has been turned into today's Peak District plush apartment complex.
17:05The factory relied, of course, on the power of the River Wye,
17:09and whilst the railway disappears into another long tunnel,
17:12there's a chance for me to take a trip down to the water's edge.
17:20Now, I thought this would be the most appropriate place to meet the person who brought me here
17:25in the very first place. So here's my dad. Hello, Dad.
17:27Hello, Broughton. Nice to see you.
17:30So when did we first come here?
17:32Well, I first came here because I was born here in Tideswell, just three miles away.
17:39But you first came when you were four or five.
17:41And what was I like as a young... Because that must be a pain.
17:43You were rather independent. Occasionally, you'd tamely follow me.
17:49Other times, we'd be walking down a dale and you'd be up on the cliff top.
17:53Waving and saying, hello, here I am, you know.
17:57What is it about Derbyshire? What is it about this neck of the woods?
18:00I mean, the Peak District is just one of those places where you want to walk.
18:05For most people, it is the easiest place to reach to
18:10if you're in Manchester or Leeds or Sheffield.
18:14Now, trout. Trout.
18:16Trout. Let's talk a little bit of trout.
18:18What's so special about this river in particular, though? Why do the trout love it so much?
18:21Well, the Wye is one of the great limestone rivers of the Pennines.
18:25You know, there's a huge waiting list to fish this bit of river,
18:28partly because it's such a fine river,
18:30partly because you've got the cachet of the Duke of Devonshire's ownership around here.
18:35And it is just a great place to fish.
18:38I go on and on quite a lot about my first trout tickling experience with you.
18:42Yes, and he hastened to say that was in a small stream
18:45far away from the bailiffs in the Hope Valley.
18:47Of course, we don't encourage trout tickling.
18:49Absolutely not.
18:51But in any event, you need to be in small streams where the trout can't run too far away.
18:56Here, they've got too much escape.
18:57And can you remember that? Can I remember it vividly, my first trout tickling moment?
19:02Touching your first trout gently under the gills is like touching your first woman.
19:06It's smooth, soft, sometimes slippery, but very exciting.
19:13I can't believe my dad has just said that.
19:16Right, I'm going to carry on walking.
19:17Thank you again for seeing me.
19:26As you head around the large basin at Cressbrook,
19:28the path takes you right down to the water's edge.
19:31The Wye Valley tightens dramatically as you follow the river upstream.
19:38Gone are the surrounding meadows of Monsildale,
19:41replaced by narrow ledge paths and vertical cliff walls.
19:48This is a bit of a strange place, and it's got a bit of a strange name as well.
19:51It's called Water Come Jollydale.
19:55And it's strange because it's completely calm here.
20:00The air is calm, the water is calm, and listen to the birdsong.
20:11It's almost like a sort of a tropical mangrove.
20:20As this riverside section of my walk comes to a close,
20:23you reach a second cotton mill at Lytton.
20:26But this one had a very different reputation to Cressbrook.
20:30One child apprentice here said that he'd rather see his own child
20:34shipped to Australia than work in such a factory.
20:39This comment of harrowing industrial hardship
20:42is said to have been the inspiration for Dickens' Oliver Twist.
20:47Stepping off the railways gives you a real sense of how this part of Derbyshire
20:51has changed over the past 200 years,
20:53both Lytton and Cressbrook owe their very existence
20:56to the once thriving cotton industry.
20:59But today, they're well-maintained, incredibly quiet pin-up villages.
21:03And, of course, in those 200 years, the railways have been and gone.
21:10With no trains, no cotton mills, and a large number of second homes,
21:14the Wye Valley is an altogether more peaceful place today
21:17than it has been for centuries.
21:20And as I reach the next station on my route,
21:22there would have been yet another industry to contend with, limestone.
21:27The old lime kilns, once served by the trains, are still clearly visible,
21:32one reason why Millersdale station was the biggest on this stretch of line.
21:37Hi, Alistair. Nice to see you.
21:39Shall I lead the way and look at the view up here?
21:41Absolutely.
21:43And this is where I've arranged to meet Alistair Lofthouse,
21:46a local publisher who's been given access to the lifetime's work
21:49of a genuine Midland Railway fanatic.
21:53Many of the black-and-white images you'll have seen in this programme
21:56come courtesy of the late Ray Morton.
22:01So, this is the man himself?
22:02Yep, that's Ray, and that's his grandson, Jonathan.
22:05He was a true railway anorak, wasn't he?
22:07Yes, I think so, yes.
22:09We've come to this particular spot because there's a great picture
22:12that really shows the then and the now.
22:14Yeah, this is Millersdale station,
22:16which was the biggest station on the line, had five platforms.
22:20And we can see the station as it was, the two viaducts.
22:23Look at that.
22:24This is probably the 1950s.
22:27Might seem like a silly question, but why two viaducts?
22:29Well, originally, there was only one,
22:31but by 1900, the line was getting so busy,
22:34they needed to increase capacity.
22:36So, around 1903, they built a second viaduct
22:39to allow the freight trains, which were getting more and more,
22:42to pass the express trains.
22:44Ironically, the older of the two viaducts at Millersdale
22:47is in far the best condition today.
22:53The newer one is still owned by Railtrack,
22:55and its long-term future seems uncertain.
23:00It makes me tingle a bit.
23:01Yeah, it does, doesn't it?
23:06Over the course of 35 years,
23:08Ray Morton provided a complete historic picture
23:11of the Midland Railway,
23:12firstly in black and white, then in colour.
23:18But Millersdale was clearly a favourite spot for him.
23:22Not just the express locomotives,
23:25but lowly freight trains pulling wagons away
23:28from the massive lime kilns.
23:31And then, as the mid-'60s arrived,
23:33he documented the slow decline and degradation
23:36of a line now in the middle of the line.
23:38This is one of my favourite pictures,
23:40the old enamelled signs,
23:42which today is a bit worth a fortune.
23:44Yeah, we need to try and track those down.
23:46And we've got the old train, complete in the British Rail green.
23:49The only thing left, of course, are the wall over there,
23:52the railings.
23:53And all of this glass canopy, of course,
23:55that we can see in the shot.
23:57It's all gone.
23:58It's all gone.
23:59It's all gone.
24:00It's all gone.
24:01It's all gone.
24:02It's all gone.
24:03It's all gone.
24:04It's all gone.
24:05It's all gone.
24:06It's all gone.
24:07It's all gone.
24:09Well, I love that. That's one of my favourites.
24:13Thank you, Alistair.
24:14It's been really lovely.
24:20And so to the final and most dramatic stretch of the Monsal Trail.
24:27The hill of Cheetor means another locked tunnel.
24:33And so the trail takes its second diversion off the railway,
24:36and from the air, well, you can see that it's quite an adventure.
24:43See, I quite like being pushed off the path
24:45because it gives you the chance to have a little adventure
24:48and also to appreciate the engineering
24:49that goes into building a railway
24:51through this really complex landscape.
24:55And as you can see, the viaducts these days
24:57have got another really good use,
24:59a bit of an abseiling hotspot.
25:01And that looks like fun.
25:02Cheedale is, for me, one of the very best spots in Derbyshire,
25:06a river walk through a classic valley
25:08that culminates in a full-blown gorge.
25:11Terrible for an intercity railway, ideal for a walker.
25:33You know I said at the beginning that the good thing about railway walks
25:36is that they're long and flat and straight?
25:38Well, I'm happy to say that I've had two little climbs on this one,
25:42and that is the cause of the second diversion.
25:51This short stretch of the Midland Railway
25:53was undoubtedly the most ambitious and complex in the whole of Derbyshire.
25:58In the space of six miles, it went through six tunnels
26:01and crossed the River Wye six times.
26:05Walking along the route today,
26:07you can't help but admire the determination
26:09there must have been to add this route to the Midlands' portfolio.
26:15And having built the thing,
26:16it's staggering that it lasted just 100 years.
26:22It's a bit of a shame,
26:24but one line does remain in the area.
26:26It's a freight line, serving the modern limestone quarries nearby.
26:30It still occupies the route of the Midland Railway from this point on,
26:34and means that walkers like myself
26:36never quite make it to the spa town of Buxton.
26:41Instead, the Monsal Trail ends here, at Blackwell Mill,
26:46a junction where trains once thundered all over Derbyshire.
26:50At Blackwell Mill, a junction where trains once thundered all around,
26:55heading to London, Manchester or Buxton.
27:10It's quite fitting that my walk should end here,
27:13surrounded entirely by the Midland Railway.
27:16In its past, it supported ducal estates, agriculture and industry.
27:21It expanded spa towns and improved communications across England.
27:25But for me and many walkers,
27:27this old railway that ploughed its dirty, noisy path
27:30through the Peak District
27:32has become a doorway for some of central England's
27:34most spectacular countryside.
28:16you