Full Steam Ahead
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- Episode
- Full Steam Ahead - Ep1
- Broadcast Info
- 2016 (59 mins)
- Description
- It’s Full Steam Ahead for historians Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn as they bring back to life the golden age of steam and explore how the Victorian railways created modern Britain.
The introduction of the steam railways in the early 19th century changed Britain in a way no one could have predicted. In this episode the team explore how they created a domestic revolution, changing the way we lived, from the houses we lived in to the food we ate.
It’s the middle of winter and the team arrive at the Ffestiniog Railway in Snowdonia to find out how millions of tons of slate were moved down the mountain. This was the slate that covers roofs in every corner of the country and all of it was moved by rail.
Underground Alex experiences the brutal conditions faced by miners in the Llechwedd Quarry who would have endured 12 hour shifts, suspended from iron chains. But then it’s an exhilarating ride down the narrow winding track aboard the "gravity train" with the whole crew hanging on to the brakes all the way.
At Foxfields Railway in Staffordshire, built to transport coal to the nearby mainline, Ruth gets on the loco’s footplate as it’s driven up the steepest railway in Britain. Coal was to change everything in our day to day lives right down to way we cooked, the shape of our pots and the role of women who had to deal with the tyranny of keeping clothes clean in this dirty industrial world. - Genre
- Arts; History; Design; Engineering; Technology; Social Science
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Full Steam Ahead". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/225878 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)