Description
Join the drivers and firemen aboard the Great Western engines for live footplate action sequences as you've never seen before. A team of Great Western enginemen from the days of steam is reunited with their engines.

We start on the footplate of the Rocket, before moving forward exactly a hundred years to the GWR pannier tanks in order to discover just how little had changed since Stephenson's days.

We then ride on a Dukedog, a throwback to the Victorian era, and find out (with the help of a slippery tunnel) the limitations of low adhesion weight and the 4-4-0 wheel arrangement.

Then it's onto the Churchward engines, forerunners of the Halls, plus 2-6-2 Prairie Tanks and 2-8-0 freight engines in both tender and tank form, and a surviving Mogul at work.

Collett engines include, of course, the Castles, Kings and Manors, but also less famous engines, including his 0-6-0 tender class and 0-4-2 branch line engines. We also sample the Halls and Modified Halls.

With more than a dozen GWR types profiled and filmed over the course of five years, this programme is believed to be the most comprehensive survey of steam power ever attempted.