Paul Merton's Secret Stations

When beautiful Mary returns to her "whistle stop" hometown, long-standing feelings of animosity between two of her old boyfriends leads to robbery and murder.

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the overnight run from Euston, London to Glasgow.

Comedy in which a bungling railway worker is given the job of stationmaster at a rundown station in rural Ireland, where his sidekicks are a toothless old gaffer and a portly young loudmouth. Hilarious adventures ensue, including a locomotive chase after gunrunners make off with a train.

Looping, chugging and barreling by, the trains in Benning's latest monumental film map a stunning topography and a history of American development. RR comes three decades after Benning and Bette Gordon made The United States of America (1975), a cinematic journey along the country’s interstates that is keenly aware “of superhighways and railroad tracks as American public symbols.” A political essay responding to the economic histories of trains as instruments in a culture of hyper-consumption, RR articulates its concern most explicitly when Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech is heard as a mile long coal train passes through eastern Wyoming. Benning spent two and a half years collecting two hundred and sixteen shots of trains, forty-three of which appear in RR. The locomotives' varying colors, speeds, vectors, and reverberations are charged with visual thrills, romance and a nostalgia heightened by Benning's declaration that this will be his last work in 16mm film.

Set at the turn of the 20th century, The Railway Children tells the story of three Edwardian children and their mother who move to a country house in Yorkshire after their father is mysteriously taken away by the police.

A hardened convict and a younger prisoner escape from a brutal prison in the middle of winter only to find themselves on an out-of-control train with a female railway worker while being pursued by the vengeful head of security.

Mismatched travellers are stranded overnight at a lonely rural railway station. They soon learn of local superstition about a phantom train which is said to travel these parts at dead of night, carrying ghosts from a long-ago train wreck in the area. The travelers eventually get to the bottom of the things that go bump in the night.

When British Railways announce the closure of the Titfield to Mallingford branch line a group of local residents make a bid to run it themselves, backed by a monied member of the community who is attracted by the complete lack of licensing hours on trains. Unfortunately the local bus company starts to use methods that can hardly be seen as fair competition.

Anglo-Indian Victoria Jones seeks her true identity amid the chaos of the British withdrawal from India.

An Irish artist, widowed by an IRA bombing, gradually learns that the American man she has become involved with is not who he seems.

Jim Vesser and his team of railroading men try to build a rail line through a mountain pass, while a group of less scrupulous construction workers sabotages the entire operation in the hopes that they can get their tracks laid first and get the money from the railroad.

Talbot works as a dispatcher at a small rural railway station. One rainy night, shortly after a company payroll has arrived at the station, a masked criminal arrives to steal it. Talbot intercepts the villain's plan and a struggle ensues. He manages to fight off the masked man and save the payroll. But during the fight he is away from his station and misses a call to change the tracks for an oncoming train. This causes a terrible train crash resulting in many lost lives.

In this crime drama, an escaped convict is recaptured and charged with killing two people in a lonely waystation during a snowstorm. Fortunately, a novelist is around to prove him innocent.

In this travelogue, actor David Suchet journeys across Europe aboard the world famous Orient Express train, as he prepares to play Poirot in an adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express".

Documentary which tells the fascinating and poignant story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums. In the post-war period, 150,000 people were hidden away in 120 of these vast Victorian institutions all across the country. Today, most mental patients, or service users as they are now called, live out in the community and the asylums have all but disappeared. Through powerful testimonies from patients, nurses and doctors, the film explores this seismic revolution and what it tells us about society's changing attitudes to mental illness over the last sixty years.

Tracks Ahead is a television series about railroading, produced by Milwaukee Public Television for public television stations. Season 9 was aired in 2015.

Michael Portillo takes to the tracks with a copy of George Bradshaw's Victorian Railway Guidebook. Portillo travels the length and breadth of the country to see how the railways changed us, and what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.

The year 2004 saw two hundred years of railways in Great Britain and to celebrate this historic landmark year, dedicated train enthusiast Mark Williams traveled the length and breadth of Britain in an exciting new TV series. Travelling the length and breadth of Britain, Mark tracks down the nation's fascinating railway heritage and gets to grips with locos such as the magnificent 160 ton Duchess of Sutherland. From the earliest designs of Richard Trevithick and George and Robert Stephenson to the advent of Class 31s, and from the development of London's Underground to the evolution of railway coaches, he reveals how our railways have changed over 200 years of history.

Dan Snow examines the development of the railways from their beginnings as track-ways for coal carts in the early 18th century to the pivotal technology for modern Britain.

Documentary series revealing the inner workings of Britain's railways, introducing the track-workers, train guards, drivers, police officers and management teams determined to keep the country moving.

From the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai, Dan Snow, Anita Rani and Robert Llewellyn explore the science behind the world's busiest railway. With John Sergeant reporting from across India.

For over a century, locomotives played a vital role in wartime. We explore some of the trains and railways, from the American Civil War through World War II, that turned the tides of battles and changed history. Rarely seen archival footage and accounts from vets who were there highlight these thrilling stories of engineering genius and extraordinary bravery.

We turn on the shower and there’s clean water. We buy food grown on the other side of the world from the shop next door. We get the train, tube or light railway into the office. We boot up the computer and there’s power. Our cities are like huge complex living organisms and just like the human body; our cities rely on its vital organs—its infrastructure—power, transport, food, water, and buildings to keep it and the people who live and work there alive. This series explores how these vital systems work. If our cities are to prosper bold new solutions are needed. We will visit many of the ingenious engineering projects and vital enterprises that will keep our cities running in the years to come. Actuality will drive the narrative. We’ll meet the individuals who perform surprising and unseen tasks that keep the power on and the water flowing.

Historian Liz McIvor explores how Britain's expanding rail network was the spark to a social revolution, starting in the 1800s and continuing through to modern times.

Actor Julie Walters rides upon the UK's most beautiful coastal railways.

Restoration experts restore iconic rail carriages back to their former glory

Rob Bell explores the lost landscapes and infrastructure of some of Britain's former railway lines. From the 1960's the axe fell on 4,000 miles of Britain's rail network. Now, decades later, Rob Bell is going on journey to uncover those lost railway lines. Every week Rob will explore a different line; experiencing the hidden landscapes, lost infrastructure and forgotten worlds that disappeared when the line closed.

The Age of Steam was born in Britain, it was one of the greatest technological breakthroughs the world had ever seen. It changed everything from the food we could eat to the jobs we could do and it powered Britain's rise to the summit of imperial power. It lasted 130 years and then was gone. Lines were axed and steam was replaced by diesel and electric trains. Yet out of the ashes the steam lines rose again as enthusiasts re-opened old lines and fired up long silent steam engines. Today the heritage lines are thriving bringing the age of steam back to life and with it bringing joy to 8 million passengers every year.

Going behind the scenes with staff at Birmingham New Street station to provide a vivid insight into the variety of situations they face, from flooding to industrial action, irate passengers, parties on the concourse and even nudity on the platforms.

Lisa, after witnessing a cataclysmic event on Platform 7 of a railway station, finds her own fragmented memory jogged to reveal a connection between her own life and that of the event she has just witnessed.