Newcastle to Chester-le-Street

Michael Portillo takes to the tracks with a copy of George Bradshaw’s Victorian Railway Guidebook. He travels the length and breadth of the country to see how the railways changed us, and what of Bradshaw’s Britain remains, as his journey follows some of the earliest railways in the country from Newcastle to Melton Mowbray.
In this episode, Michael visits the first locomotive factory in the world opened by George Stephenson, searches for the lost pit village of Marsden in South Shields, and is entertained by a comic troupe of rapper sword dancers in Chester-le-Street.