Great Railway Adventures with Dan Cruickshank (2010 - 2010)

We celebrate one of Britain's most ingenious and prolific engineers - Isambard Kingdom Brunel. A perfectionist intent on managing every last detail, Brunel relished the task of building a high-speed and comfortable passenger line linking Bristol to London. As much a work of art as a transport network, his constructions included Paddington station, Clifton Suspension Bridge and Box Tunnel - at the time, the longest railway tunnel the world had ever seen.

In this final episode Dan travels back to the dawn of the first regular service - built between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830 - to explore how this technological wonder came about. Following the early routes over the Pennines, Dan investigates George and Robert Stephenson's pioneering work, explains how the burgeoning network was constructed to serve Lancashire's cotton mills, and reveals how fortunes were won and lost in the race to become one of Britain's first rail magnates.