Great British Railway Journeys Ep 2/20
In the second leg of his first journey from Liverpool to Scarborough, Michael Portillo visits “cottonpolis” – George Bradshaw’s home town of Manchester – as the series that explores how the railways changed the nation continues.
Meeting up with tour guide Jonathan Schofield, Michael finds out how the world’s first railway helped to turn Manchester’s cotton industry into a global success.
Michael then takes the train out to Denton in the suburbs of Manchester. This was once the centre of the hat-making world, turning out thousands of hats which were transported all over the country on the railways. Here, Michael meets Karen Turner from Failsworth Hats, the last remaining hat factory in the area. Karen fits Michael for his own custom-made trilby which, some say, was invented here, and he finds out where the phrase “mad as a hatter” came from.
Back in the centre of Manchester, historian Trefor Thomas tells Michael more about Bradshaw and how he came to produce the world’s first pocket railway timetables.
Leaving Manchester for Bury, Michael meets businessman Tony Rogers to find out how the railways helped to create the national institution of fish and chips. The railways allowed fish to travel quickly inland and it soon became available everywhere, allowing fish and chip shops to flourish all over Britain. Tony runs a fish and chip shop supply business and takes Michael to one of the best shops in the area for a fish supper.
Comment from fred
Time January 6, 2010 at 12:04 pm
While I quite enjoyed the first episode in Liverpool and Eccles, I was rather disappointed with this one. Instead of spending time at Liverpool Road Station – the world’s oldest railway station (now part of MOSI) and travelling direct to Bury on one of the world’s oldest electric railways, now part of the Metro tram network, and perhaps travelling to Rawtenstall on the East Lancs railway, he diverted south to Denton on one of the UK’s least frequent train services (he could have travelled to Stockport’s Hat Museum by rail?)! Thence back to Manchester and on to Bury, via Castleton (and there is no train link between Castleton and Bury!). I’ll be intrigued to see how he gets across the Pennines from Bury to Todmorden! Maybe this series should have been called Travelling Coast to Coast by a Circuitous Route with the Odd Railway Journey Thrown In?