Some 150 years ago,
our Victorian forebears
built a railway system that was the envy of the world.
But one corner of this sceptred isle
thwarted their tenacious, pioneering spirit...
..the Highlands of Scotland.
A beautiful...
harsh...
unforgiving landscape...
..totally unsuited to the train.
That is, until now.
VOICEOVER: I'm Dick Strawbridge.
And in honour of our Victorian ancestors, I've set myself
the challenge of achieving, in miniature,
what they could not...
Is that beautiful, or what?!
VOICEOVER: ..building a railway line 70-plus miles
through the Great Glen of Scotland.
Oh, whoa, steady... We're going!
VOICEOVER: We're five days into this epic project...
That is our track, boys and girls.
..and we're already discovering...
I don't run! I'm too old for this.
..why the mighty Victorians gave up
on a trans-Caledonian railway.
This is actually
a whole pile of engineering work.
Whoo! Whoa.
But keeping the biggest little railway running on schedule...
Our train's not going up the hill.
..is about to get...
THUNDER RUMBLES ..much harder.
I can't... My left arm is going. Morale is definitely getting lower.
SHE GROANS
How are you feeling? I think "wet" would understate it.
Work faster, work harder, sleep less...
This is the bit that's a bit tricky.
None of them will tell me that they're nervous,
but it is quite obvious that they are.
The train is not travelling fast enough.
So, where I'm directing, it's straight through there...
We're on the best ground we've had since we set off,
and we're going slower than we've ever done.
Not good at all.
There's very few places I'd rather be on a Sunday morning than this.
Silver Lady is in the hands of a new team of volunteer navvies.
Living the dream here!
Inverness is still 65 miles away.
That's the equivalent of 1,200 miles for our model train.
So far we've reached the towpath approaching Gairlochy,
and I'm hoping to reach Aberchalder by the day after tomorrow.
A 20-mile journey, that will see Silver Lady cross two bridges
constructed by our special build team.
The first is at Laggan Locks,
a 13-metre-long truss bridge
across the canal.
And seven miles beyond that
is our stunning 60-metre-long viaduct at Aberchalder Ford.
So this is an absolute piece of cake, compared with what's coming.
And what's coming for our track lane navvies
is no piece of cake either.
Morning, team! ALL: Morning.
Right. We are now more than halfway with the track.
Whoa! That is a phenomenal achievement in its own right.
H?
All the nice areas are... just about come to an end.
You're cheerful, aren't you?
No - we have to face facts. Yeah...
We're on day six and we always said we were going to get bedded in
and then we have to sort of head up. You're going up a hill.
Hairpins, hairpins, hairpins, hairpins.
Just know it's going to be fun.
VOICEOVER: So far we've laid track as far as the town of Fort Augustus.
And our navvies are about to tackle terrain
that the Victorians never attempted -
the mountainous woodland
of Invermoriston Hill,
the highest point on our route so far.
Today, Teams D, C and B
will begin laying track on the undulating approach
from Fort Augustus to the foot of Invermoriston.
And Team A
will have to start climbing hundreds of metres,
laying track on the steep, twisting forest roads.
Those are hard miles.
We have to get those miles under our belt.
Fail to win the battle for Invermoriston Hill,
and we could face the nightmare prospect
of our late-running engine actually running out of track.
So we are going up there...
thankfully in zigzags, but we are now climbing.
We've done the flat - the second half is all uphill.
And if that wasn't enough of a challenge...
Ladies and gentlemen, we have track!
..the track layers will be a man down.
It's Martin's birthday -
and unlike the original navvies,
I've allowed him a day off.
Word on the street is that there's
a cheeky wee party tonight for my birthday, so
I think it's brought a good vibe.
As well as a party to look forward to,
Martin's sons are coming to visit.
I tidied my wee house. I don't want them seeing that Daddy's
living in a pigsty,
otherwise they'll try and get away with that when we get home!
There we go. Aww!
Hi, you guys.
VOICEOVER: It's been a week since I've seen them.
Ohhh!
Probably when they leave, I'll be like, "Oh, they're gone!"
Look at that.
WOMAN: Are you excited to see the train?
BOTH: Yeah. How big do you think the train's going to be?
Erm... This big.
This... Erm...
This big?
This big!
25 miles ahead of the train,
along the Great Glen Way,
is the forest of Inchnacardoch -
and the location of our special build team's next project.
It's a big job, this.
This is a bit...big.
In scale terms to Silver Lady,
this pass is 50 metres deep
and half a kilometre across.
Let's call it...
Inchnacardoch Canyon.
A railway spotter's dream...
And it's the special build team's job to get her across safely.
Point A is not in a straight line,
it's actually...curved round.
So what are you thinking, Chris?
Well, I was thinking suspension bridge at first, but now there's
a curve involved...
Suspension bridges aren't great for trains. Trestle...?
Trestle format...structure?
Like an American style.
Yeah. That's the one. Do that.
Like real Wild West stuff.
The biggest little railway is about to get its first cowboy build.
As railways spread across the US,
19th-century engineers had to conquer huge ravines.
They pioneered the trestle bridge -
where weight could be split across small sections,
increasing stability and making it easier to follow
the uneven contours of the land.
So at Inchnacardoch Canyon,
the plan is to erect dozens of interconnecting A-frames
along the curved route,
linking up with the track on either side of the water.
Once secured, they'll screw the track directly onto the main joists
of the A-frames, so we'll get an uninterrupted view
as Silver Lady hopefully glides across.
We've probably got
about a third of the time that I'd like to have!
You know, I'd like probably closer to...two weeks.
Someone's definitely going to get absolutely soaked in here,
and it's probably going to be me.
Our little engine has reached Gairlochy.
No overtaking! THEY LAUGH
It's pretty straightforward on the straights. It'll be so much more
difficult when we get into the woods and we, like, hit those curves.
I'm going to definitely drive it, definitely going to give it a go.
We're ready. We're ready! Your moment has come, young lady.
See what happens in my hands.
How difficult can it be?
VOICEOVER: I'm a project manager for Network Rail.
When I first joined the rail industry, I was really
self-conscious about the fact that I'm, like, a young woman
in this man's world.
But, every day I'm, like, feeling more comfortable in my own skin.
So I just don't want to be breaking anything
and I just want to be doing women in rail justice.
Go, go, go!
Despite a promising career with full-size trains,
this project is Florence's first experience with model railways.
If there was a guy, and I was going out with him,
and he was a model railway enthusiast,
it's not a SHARED interest that we'd have,
erm...
but it depends, like, they may, you know,
make up for it in...
other ways!
We've had nice easy road work all morning,
got the engine running sweet,
but it's had no real, major...
perhaps what we'd call hazards to deal with.
And now we're going up a very steep incline.
Our engine is about to get its first real taste
of the Scottish Highlands.
Let's see how it performs!
And if there's one thing I know about steam engines,
it's that they hate hills.
Right. I have an inclinometer in my pack.
But any hill I have to really push to get up,
I'm just thinking -
the train'll be pushing to get up here.
The steepest incline that a standard British steam engine
has ever had to tackle
is the Lickey Incline near Birmingham...
ARCHIVE: ..Famous in railway circles
for the severe gradient it encounters
as it passes over the Lickey Hills...
Brunel himself said
that asking engines to tackle the gentle-sounding 1.5-degree climb
was madness.
But against his advice - and without his cooperation -
the line was opened in 1840.
ARCHIVE: A Stanier Class 5 shows the extent of its severity...
The only way Lickey could be conquered
was by using up to three more engines to push trains up the hill.
Our single engine is facing a 17-degree climb...
It's exciting, eh?
..more than ten times steeper
than the hill Brunel wanted nothing to do with.
Get that train going!
We're going up the hill - come on, little one!
Come on, keep it going... Keep it going, keep it going, keep it going.
Keep it coming, keep it coming... Keep it coming.
Come on, Lady. Come on!
Come on!
Our train's not going up the hill.
Have we got a solution, team?!
Silver Lady is stuck at the bottom of the first real hill
she's ever had to climb.
Why's it not moving?
Come on, Lady! Come on!
We're at Gairlochy and to stand a chance of reaching Inverness
in seven days, by the day after tomorrow
we need to have crossed Laggan Locks
and reach Aberchalder ford.
But that's 17 miles away, and we're struggling.
ENGINE GURGLES
That sounds like a shortage of water, team. Yeah.
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!
OK, that noise - obviously there's a lack of water in the boiler, OK?
It could be because all the water will be running
to the back of the boiler.
That might affect it.
As with a full size engine, Silver Lady is powered
by the steam it draws through a regulator
on top of the boiler at the rear.
Travelling up a steep incline will cause the back of the boiler
to flood, forcing water up through the regulator
and into the cylinders.
Flooded cylinders don't turn.
It's a problem that could have a pretty straightforward solution.
Right. Going up like this, the water comes out the back.
Going up in in reverse, the water stays in the tank.
We're trying it in reverse.
I think it's an ingenious engineering solution.
In reverse, the regulator will always be higher
than the water level,
ensuring that only steam will pass
through to the cylinders.
Rather than reversing up Wales's highest peak,
since 1896, the steam engines of the Snowdon Mountain Railway
have been fitted with tilted boilers to achieve the same result.
So is it going to reverse up, do you think, guys?
Yep. You think it will?
That's the attitude! We love that positivity.
Have we used in reverse yet? No.
CHILDREN CHEER
Keep it coming, keep it coming, keep it coming!
Get up the hill!
Look at that - it's got the power.
Get up there!
Get up there! Come on!
Look at... Oh, look, slow... Slow it down for the tracks.
Slow it down for that bit. Yeah!
THEY CHEER
Keep going! Inverness!
Inverness.
What is a real worry is that that's about 150 yards
in about 20 minutes.
This terrain is positively evil.
But despite the terrain...
This view is incredible. The view? Yeah. Oh, yeah!
..we're beginning to discover what the Victorians
were missing out on.
Absolutely incredible. It is, isn't it? It is...
It's not changed... You'd run out of superlatives to describe it. Mm.
You know, it's just...
My wife is very jealous I'm here.
I keep sending her pictures and she says,
"Stop! You're making me jealous. Don't send any more."
But I think we'll be back again.
Definitely.
This is the Dee Bridge.
Slowly-moly. No pressure, Florence.
I'm not really into trains but I'm getting more of an appreciation
for model railways and trains, like, every day.
Here we go. Steady!
Steady, steady, steady!
Keep going! Keep going! Keep going!
Accelerator... He's up and away.
THEY CHEER
I am a good driver, though, just saying.
30 miles away on Invermoriston hill,
the view for our track-laying navvies isn't quite as appealing.
All right, guys, how's it going? Good!
You're all looking very netted-up.
It is a bit of a mosquito-infested part, isn't it?
Oh, the sodding midges are sodding everywhere today!
I've been eaten alive. I've got the bites all over me.
I've been squirting away with the midge stuff.
I haven't got a midge net because I gave it to
another team member who'd lost theirs.
I've got more bites on my legs than you could do
with a join-the-dots puzzle.
So, definitely... SHE LAUGHS
..this is the look.
It's very stylish.
We'll all be fine.
We'll keep on spraying that stuff and we'll keep on building track.
Great!
Up at the top with Team A...
I think I need oxygen!
LAUGHTER
..Lawrence is doing his best to keep up morale.
My best skill is not taking myself too seriously.
Where you've got a happy workforce,
they're normally 15-20% more productive
than an unhappy workforce.
And his alternative style of leadership...
Push down! Oh!
..seems to have inspired some alternative solutions.
I was looking at the hill, thinking, carrying it up,
so then we just wondered if it would slide, and it did.
Rather than struggling to lay as they climb,
the team are connecting sections of track
and then sliding them back down the steep incline.
To think of doing a gravity push feed of track
is absolutely brilliant.
It saves a lot of people climbing up to altitude.
It's allowed us to produce the rail this quickly.
I know that's good, isn't it? I'm really proud of that.
Up at Inchnacardoch Canyon, Claire and her engineers
have discovered a problem.
So that's the landfall up there? Yes.
It's quite a drop in level.
That's going to be about four or five foot.
It's another complication for the actual build.
The land where the train will enter the bridge
is currently much lower
than where it will exit,
creating a gradient the Silver Lady
won't be able to climb.
It's going to have to climb steadily as it curves round.
And as the start and end points aren't in a straight line,
there's only one way to plot a gentler gradient.
Historically accurate food colouring and plastic. Exactly. OK.
For centuries, engineers have known over a length of a hose -
water will always find the same level.
There it goes.
So if I go over there and he stays miles down the river,
and we both agree that they're both on eight and a half,
we know that we're at the same height wherever we're standing.
Hold there for a sec. A little tiny bit more.
By keeping the water at the same level here,
we can then find the same level in the centre of the stream.
So now we've got my end, the centre and the other landing point.
We're going to take two more poles and do halfway between again
so we'll have five marks.
With five points of exactly the same height,
the team can establish a starting
point further inland, and from there
plan a gentler gradient between
each marker as the bridge curves
towards the higher exit.
That's it - mark. That's it.
Put them together... They now need to construct those A-frames
and connect them along
the entire length of the bridge.
It looks simple but once we get into that river,
the A-frames will obviously change...
And potentially every single leg will be bespoke.
Bespoke - exactly, yeah.
The rocky, uneven terrain will mean that each A-frame
will have to be tailor-made
to reach their carefully-plotted incline.
Are you adding 20 on there for the foundations? Yeah.
And given the enormous length of their bridge...
Yeah, I'm going to take that and go. OK.
..they're going to need a lot of A-frames.
With the dream team that we've got now, a piece of cake.
Really? Yeah.
This bridge needs to be ready to cross in three days.
We've passed Gairlochy and are now on the forest path
beside Loch Lochy, and Florence has handed over the controls.
It's not quite like your radio-controlled cars, OK?
If we want to go forward,
we press it all the way that way. Comprende, senor? Mm-hm.
Do you know what it's called? No. The Silver Lady.
THEY GIGGLE
OK, that's it. Good boy. Walk with it as well. Gently.
Yeah, gently. Not too fast. Slow over here. That's it.
Slowly, slowly. Yeah, nice driving!
So proud of them!
It's really awesome because it almost feels like
I'm living my childhood that I didn't have with them.
And it's like, ooh!
Choo-choo! Choo-choo!
Go on, gentle, gentle.
My parents split up when I was young, I stayed with my dad.
You know, he did the best he could. You know, he was an ex-marine.
His life was a certain way for so long
and then all of a sudden he finds himself a single father.
You know, my dad, God rest his soul, he did his best,
he really, really tried his hardest.
But, you know, if you don't know how to do something,
you can try as hard as you like.
You're doing such a great job.
He wasn't really a big feelings kind of guy, which...
..you know, I'm not for myself but I am for my kids,
so lots of love, lots of encouragement.
You're not a proper engine driver... Oh, look at that!
..until you've got a hat, are you?
I'm only going to see them for a couple of hours today
and that's just not... It's not enough.
If it was down to me, man, they'd be in that tent with me
and they'd be doing the whole thing. Give me a picture.
You are so happy, aren't you? Give me a five. High five.
Good man.
My father was a minister of religion,
I didn't see him a lot.
But the father I saw playing trains was very different
from the father I saw preaching from the pulpit on a Sunday.
May I say that we've taken our first challenge stage
and I think you guys have absolutely smashed it.
It allowed him to be engaged in something
where you almost felt he was carefree.
He was almost enjoying his childhood as well as I was enjoying mine.
It's something which I only really understand now
when I've reached my age.
I don't think of myself as 63.
When I'm with my trains I'm probably about 18.
And that's not the only way
that Lawrence stays young at heart.
Where are you off to, Lawrence?
I've got new toys to play with.
Have you been posing, Lings?
One state-of-the-art CD set of decks.
I'm a DJ. I have been for 45 years.
I've worked with Bobby Davro,
I've worked with Chris Kamara,
I've worked with Jimmy Greaves.
At the end of day, I've got great memories and a little extra
money in the bank to help me bring up my family.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have a DJ name?
I'm Lawrence The DJ.
POP MUSIC PLAYS
# I've got a feeling
# That tonight's gonna be a good night. #
Martin's birthday was today.
We are going to give him a party that he won't forget.
# Tonight's the night
# Let's live it up... #
It's our navvies' first proper night off in almost a week.
An event that over a century ago would have terrified the community
surrounding the construction of a railway.
Given the appalling sanitation in their camps,
water wasn't safe to drink.
So as they worked, the navvies drank beer...
..ten pints a day.
On the rare occasions they were given time off,
they drank even more.
It sometimes led to fatal rioting.
In February 1846 in Midlothian, a rampaging horde
of over 300 navvies took on the Edinburgh county police.
Armed with shovels and pickaxes,
one of the numbers struck an officer in the head.
The policeman was then kicked to death as he lay unconscious.
The Victorians came to view the navvy as a terrifying race apart.
And mothers would tell their naughty children that unless they behaved,
the monstrous navvy would come and take them away.
THEY CHEER
After a night off, it would often take the railway company
several days to sober the navvies up and persuade them to return to work.
# Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la... #
But if we're going to make it to Inverness,
I need this lot ready to go first thing in the morning.
# And Marie who waits for me. #
It's another early start.
I think I'll be ready for a lay-in by end of t' week.
A good lay-in.
It's our engineer Chris's job to ensure that Silver Lady
is fit enough to reach Aberchalder ford
by tomorrow evening.
The boiler's loose. The bodywork's battered.
I had to clean all the chassis down, get all the grit off of it.
How much damage can this thing take?
If you've ever stood alongside a full-size steam engine,
you can hear it ticking and simmering
and it's like it's got a life of its own.
Not everybody will see it that way and understand it like that,
but you stand up alongside that piece of machinery and what...
..what it does, and just listen.
Whilst our little engine is ready for another day on the track...
..the same can't be said for our navvies...
I have a feeling that we may have to
put a bit of effort, this morning, in.
So I've brought out the managerial whistle.
HE BLOWS WHISTLE
Yeah, it works.
Stop it! BLEEP!
Did your kids enjoy yesterday?
They had a great day out. Ah, bless 'em.
They played with the train, and... Yeah. Oh, brilliant.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Aww. Right, I think I'm going to be sick.
I need to do it in my tent. Oh, dear.
..and last night's party has also taken its toll
on my new train crew...
Water goes in this one. OK?
Steam comes out of this one, cos this is the boiler.
..but I need them to make up a lot of ground.
Yesterday's rough terrain saw us cover just four miles -
but the good news is we're
approaching a stretch of track,
alongside Loch Lochy,
that's flatter.
So whilst the going is good,
I'd love to see Silver Lady travel
13 miles closer to Aberchalder.
If we can get anywhere near that 13 miles we can get to Inverness.
We may not sleep very much but we'll get there.
It's actually really cute.
I don't know if I can call a train cute.
Why are you doing this?
Why am I doing this?
Because I thought it sounded like fun.
I'm hugely passionate about engineering,
and when I found out about this,
I just thought, "That just sounds like the craziest thing
"in the world, but, hey, why not?"
It's like a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Not sure whether I'll be buying my own railway set after this,
but already had a few invitations to some model railway exhibitions
up and down the country, so you never know!
Might go and have a look at a couple of them, see what they're like.
I'm actually really intrigued.
It kind of struck me
that it's really about creating this fantasy world
and the power to create the stories and the intrigue
and the interest about it -
and I can understand that.
You know, I used to enjoy Lego
or dabbling with Sim City on the computer.
It's that idea that you can create your own little world,
and I get it - but, unfortunately, I live in London
so I have a one-bedroom flat.
There's no way I'm going to get a model railway set in there,
so, um... Maybe, yeah, like a tiny, weeny, weeny one.
What's the aim today? How many miles?
If you do 13 I'll let you have the rest of the day off. 13?!
Down at Inchnacardoch canyon,
an impressive Wild West-style trestle bridge,
complete with dozens of tailor-made A-frames,
is beginning to take shape.
I think structurally it's all right. I could probably sit on it.
You reckon you could sit on that?
Yes.
Ooh...!
If it will hold me... 65 kilos versus a three-odd kilo train.
This is a bit over-built.
Hadrian's come to check how the bridge is going to connect
with the work done by his tracklaying teams.
Explain to me what's actually going on here.
I'm intrigued.
Well, they're going for a nice curved trestle bridge.
That's not the shape I originally thought of -
but you carry on that arc you've just created a 90 degree bend.
At one end of the bridge,
the current curve will meet the track on land at a right angle,
a bend that Silver Lady simply won't get around.
Well, we could use... S-section here? Yeah.
So leave your original curve. Yeah. That's great.
If you imagine it coming to sort of here,
roughly where this bit of track is,
I mean you've got that - such a lovely shape.
To eliminate the right angle,
Hadrian is proposing taking the current curve
and adding another
to form an S-shaped bridge.
This will lengthen it
so the bridge will meet the track
much further inland
and without a sharp bend.
By making it an S, which makes the bridge even sexier,
we eliminate another 90 degree and have a better-looking item.
HE SIGHS
That always happens, doesn't it?
Someone comes in and changes the master plan.
Do we want to change the curve as we hit shore? Yeah.
We haven't got time to mess around with the colourful water again.
It's just more.
We've got more to do and less time to do it in.
Work faster, work harder, sleep less.
It will be interesting, won't it?
Plus ca change.
The train's on its way. This has got to be finished.
So, down to Claire to crack the whip.
Bye! Bye!
Progress is also slowing down for our tracklaying navvies
on Invermoriston Hill.
We're having trouble. We're spending so much time
doing curves that we're getting so far behind.
I'm losing my trousers. Hang on a sec.
Are you losing weight out here?
I am losing... The amount of times
I've walked up and down Cardiac Hill, I'd hate to tell you today.
Bloody track. Oh, God.
This is going to be hard.
They're just slogging with a hangover, I think.
Do you know, this is the first time I've sat on my arse
since I've been here.
I know - and this is the quickest we've ever laid track. Exactly.
So that just proves laziness is best.
They had a good party last night
but I think it's taking a little time
to warm up their engines today.
Where else in our lifetime will we ever be able to find people
of the same interests and every night have a BLEEP.
SHE LAUGHS
You know?
Silver Lady has ground to a halt on the flat terrain
alongside Loch Lochy.
Have you guys used a train like this before? Never. Never.
No, to be honest, I've never driven any kind of train before, so...
I've driven a big one once before along the Severn Valley Railway.
What's wrong with it?
We've managed to go one mile in, I don't know...
Like, a couple of hours. ..two hours.
There's only one man that can get Silver Lady moving.
How do you think the team are getting on today?
No disrespect to anybody,
but if I'm brutally honest, we're very, very slow.
We're not working as a team.
Yeah, we're out. Bone dry. You must keep an eye on that water level.
Without water, the boiler can become so hot
that the soldered joints that hold Silver Lady together can melt -
and if an overheated boiler is refilled too quickly,
the rapid cooling can cause it to rupture.
They are actually more complicated than what you think, you know?
You can look at it and think it's just a fancy toy. They're not.
All today's train crew can do now is wait.
We just walked past Achnacarry.
Just see the corner of it there.
My grandad, who unfortunately isn't here any more,
was in the Commandos,
and obviously came up here cos it's their training ground.
This is the place where they start to turn ordinary blokes
like you and me into real Commandos.
Between 1942 and 1946, Commandos, including Katie's grandfather,
had to endure an initiation born from the Victorian failure
to build a viable railway along the Great Glen Way.
In 1899, a branch line from the West Highland Railway
was begun at Spean Bridge -
but construction halted at Fort Augustus
and the underused route was closed in 1933.
This left Spean Bridge as the closest station
to the Commandos training camp seven miles away...
Blow me if we didn't start training as soon as we got there.
..and if hopeful soldiers couldn't make the seven-mile run
in under an hour,
the Commandos wouldn't take them.
Coo, what a reception!
Over 25,000 men made it,
and went on to endure months of punishing training
in one of the toughest environments in the British Isles,
before going on to complete some of the most daring missions
of the Second World War.
My grandad was pretty good at running so...he made it.
He stayed in the Commandos until the war was over.
I feel like I've had a moment to connect with him, which is nice.
Do you feel like he's here? Yeah.
Sorry, I don't want to cry on camera.
He had a heart attack, so it was quite sudden,
and I think he was such a big character
because it's such a big family... Sorry.
He's such a big character that it kind of was a real wrench
for everybody when he disappeared, so...
My dad is one of seven, and they've always talked
about coming back up and getting off the train and doing the run -
you know, there's five brothers, so it gets quite competitive.
They haven't made it yet, so...
So, yeah, it's really nice to, I guess,
be the first one here from the family.
Yeah.
We should probably crack on,
cos that little train is steaming away, now,
which is exciting, so...
Hopefully, we'll be going a bit faster
than one mile per three hours or something.
On the best ground we've had since we set off,
and we're going slower than we've ever done.
Not good at all.
Three hours and 20 minutes a mile.
Working nine hour days, that's 20 days.
Oh, dear.
20 days.
We're due in Inverness in five and a half.
It's only ten days of 18 hour days...
24 hour days, it's even less.
But longer days may not be popular.
They've faced midges and hangovers,
but now the tracklayers must confront a new enemy.
THUNDER RUMBLES
How are you feeling?
I think "wet" would understate it.
Everybody's absolutely soaked, they're tired,
and, amazingly, I've now discovered a new fact -
midges still fly in the rain.
So I'm having to work with glasses and a midge net
and somehow they're still finding me.
THUNDER RUMBLES
I'm BLEEP wet through. I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm tired.
Morale is definitely getting lower.
I can't... My left arm is going. Yeah, summer in Scotland!
The novelty, I think, is starting to wear off. Are you happy?
Uh...
No.
I think the phrase "the hard yards" comes to mind.
I think everybody just wants to finish and go home.
Ugh!
Nothing left.
The point is, this was never going to be a dolly of a trip.
We're in Scotland. We know we're in the mountains.
I've got to deliver this section.
Maybe we should... I think that's the end of the line
for today. ..call it a day. OK. Yep.
I think we've done four miles today. It's not enough, is it?
Silver Lady is nine miles behind schedule,
and the tracklayers are staring at defeat
in the Battle of Invermoriston.
So, I've made a decision.
I think everybody needs to know where we are,
and where we are is we are not going to get into Inverness.
Right, the map.
We are at Fort William. At this end, I have Inverness.
If we look down the bottom end, the red is train progress to date.
The train is not travelling fast enough.
What we're going to have to do is work double shifts.
The train is going to be going out in the morning
and coming back late at night.
I'm starting at six and we're finishing at ten.
If that's not working,
we will work through the night with our head torches on.
The train must be moving.
Everything has to be done faster.
Just to make sure there's no ambiguity, where I'm coming from,
we're going to BLEEP Inverness.
to the running of the biggest little railway.
Right, roll out, let's roll out, let's get it done.
Two days ago, our target was reaching Aberchalder Ford,
but we're still alongside Loch Lochy,
and nine miles behind schedule.
From now on, Silver Lady will have to run 16-hour days.
Ahead of us at Laggan Locks
is the special build team's truss bridge,
a 13-metre-long crossing above deep water
that I'd much rather attempt in daylight.
We can't afford any stoppages, so it's a bit like Army breakfast.
You know, you keep going, you know, eat on the job.
By the end of today, I also need the engineers to finish
Hadrian's extension of our trestle bridge.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. How you feeling?
And Lawrence needs to lift his team one last time
to complete the track on Invermoriston Hill.
Right, onward! We are The A-Team. Let's get rolling.
STEREO PLAYS THE A-TEAM THEME Oh! Can we go any louder?
AS MR T: I can run that train, fool!
LAUGHTER
THEY SING ALONG TO TUNE
It's tricky. It's narrow.
You can't get people between each other in some sections.
There's a lot of curves to go in, there's a lot of joining up to do.
I want to go out there positive, saying, "We can do this.
"I know what I'm doing.
"Rely on me. Deliver what I need."
And delivering Silver Lady to Aberchalder...
We do this every three, do we?
This motion sort of every three, yeah.
..could now be a possibility thanks to Cameron.
We're not refilling the gas tank every single time.
So you're just virtually... When you get a service, it's going to be
a quick water change, gas is lit and you're off.
I love it. I just love the fact they're all getting stuck into it.
This train's getting some love, you know.
It's getting some love.
It can actually run a full-size engine.
So you're doing a service with just water.
So you put water in, the flame's still lit. Within five...
Well, within two minutes, you're back up and running,
you're back moving, you're back tracking the miles.
It's like the railroad in America.
I think it was the Transcontinental Railroad that had this big moment
where the two ends of the railroad met and they had a big ceremony
with sticking in the pin, the golden spike.
I've got a golden screw - will that do?
Quite a poignant moment, really.
Well done, sir. Nice one.
So there you go.
That's our trestle bridge connected into the rest of the system.
In just three days, the Wild West has come to the Highlands.
But will it be safe for Silver Lady to cross
what, to her, will be a canyon - nearly half-a-kilometre wide?
We could check it with a set of vernier callipers all the way along,
but that would take forever.
So the best way to test the bridge is with a train.
So what's this one, then? This is James.
This is a locomotive which is mass produced, but I've named it James
after my grandad, and I know that my grandad walked some of
this route on holiday over the years with Gran,
so it seems quite fitting, really, to name it after him.
So he's walked the Great Glen,
and I'm going to drive a train down the Great Glen.
OK? OK. Righto.
Oh... Aw, just look at that.
Look how smooth that's running.
After painstaking plotting, using centuries-old engineering tricks...
Go on, fella. Go on. Go on.
..precision measuring and cutting off hundreds of lengths of timber
for a lattice of A-frames...
..and even after Hadrian's radical change of design...
H was right - it does look better.
You don't have to tell him that, but it does look better.
..it looks like Andy's grandad is going to make it
across the Inchnacardoch Canyon.
I love the way we make the links from the past to the future
with the things that we do. Yeah.
Does make you proud... Oh, yeah.
Four days ago, there was just nothing here. Nothing.
And we are clear. We are done.
That looked absolutely amazing.
Well done. Nice one, buddy. Cheers.
Nice one. Thank you. Well driven.
Hopefully in about half an hour,
the bottom team and the top team will be in sight of each other.
I'd have been very sad if we weren't achieving with this team.
I'd have been very, very sad if his team didn't like me.
The great thing is the team like me, we're working well together.
Here he comes, Lawrence of Arabia.
I really like Lawrence. He does make it so much more fun.
Lawrence and the track-laying navvies
on the verge of completing five miles of track
up and over the harshest terrain of the route so far.
Very shortly, we'll join this to that, and we go home. Simples.
MAN ON RADIO: Thank you, Lawrence.
I can genuinely say we've got the best team by far,
and we've got the best atmosphere,
we've got the best working relationship.
We're all friends.
Has he done a good job? Yes, he has.
You don't even have a theme tune!
We've gone out there, fought gradients,
fought the terrain and we've won.
See you, guys. See you later. Bye! See you all later, losers!
This has been the most fun I've had in a long time.
I've got the biggest black book of acquaintances you could possibly
want, but the number of times when somebody rings me up and says,
"Lawrence, would you like a beer and a game of darts?" They don't exist.
RADIO STATIC
MAN ON RADIO: Lawrence, are you receiving? Over.
Bloody well done to everyone.
We have finally taken Invermoriston hill.
I don't make friends easily,
but I think, when I leave here, I won't leave these people,
we'll be friends for a long time.
Cameron's plan for faster services on our little engine...
When it goes flat out, it does go very fast. Oh, yeah.
..may now have given us a problem.
Laggan Locks are in sight.
I can see the people bringing the train.
Claire and her engineers are running out of time to deploy
the 13-metre-long truss bridge they constructed five days ago.
Did you say you've seen the people? They're up on the road...
Is that them over there, is it?
Time is ticking, gentlemen.
When this bridge was first tested...
Ugh...
..deployment was slow and not exactly successful.
That's in the water.
Today, we can't afford any delays.
You're staying on the train until we get over the bridge at the lock.
Both teams are on it, OK?
We were time limited. It will be fine.
None of them will tell me that they're nervous,
but it is quite obvious that they are.
OK, nice flat bit...
LORRY HORN BLARES
There are boats still coming through,
but track layers have arrived on the other side of the lock.
So, where I'm directing it straight through there.
It's time for us to get our...in gear.
Whoa! Whoa! Before you just push me in the water!
Stick it straight on the end, Joe.
There you go, that's where the bridge is going.
I now want silence, cos otherwise this could go horribly wrong.
It will probably got horribly wrong with silence, but never mind.
Right, lift the bridge!
Bit nervous at this stage.
Alex, you're now to pivot. We're moving the bridge round.
This bridge took three days to construct.
It's all right, we're all OK. You're OK? You're not stressed?
If it cracks or falls into the canal...
This is a bit that's a bit tricky...
..Silver Lady could be stranded on the wrong side of the water.
It doesn't bear thinking about.
Alex, you're now moving forward. Yeah.
Claire, secure your line.
OK, that's my length. Stop.
Ease away.
Easing. Right, rope teams, this end.
Claire, when you're happy, ease away.
Gently, gently.
Right, we're pivoting round. Slowly!
Are we in steam? Yes. Thank you.
Ease slowly down.
Good.
To scale, the bridge is almost 250-metres long.
And there's the equivalent of a 50-metre drop to the water.
Who is going to go and get it if it drops?
Our train is going all by itself into the void.
Right, get that train going!
Steady. And away we go.
Go, go, go, go, go! Go.
Not too fast... That's lovely.
Is that beautiful, or what?!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I never had any doubt whatsoever.
I knew it would be fine!
Right, get that train going! Inverness is not getting any closer.
Well done, team, well done, team.
Elation is how I'm feeling right now.
I even managed to keep Dick quiet.
Stay ahead of it, Martin. You've got it.
Stay ahead of it all the way up that hill.
They're off, aren't they? As soon as they've done it, they're off.
They're not pausing for breath at all.
It's a victory.
But the day is far from over.
It's up to Silver Lady's first-ever night shift...
HE IMITATES TRAIN HORN
..to get us as close as possible to Aberchalder Ford.
Isn't there a famous poem about a night train running?
There is. There's the Night Mail, by...
I think it's John Betjeman, isn't it? No, WH Auden.
Auden? Right, OK. I could recognise it. I couldn't recount it now.
HE LAUGHS
Has anyone got the Wikipedia working?
Inverness is still 45 miles away.
TRAIN HORN WHISTLES
Or 1,000 miles if you're running the biggest little railway.
It's getting an absolute hammering.
Silver Lady faces a day that will make...
Come on, we can really pump this up the track.
..or break her...
This is a mess. ..and the navvies.
Why are you not listening? I am.
And with time against us...
We are right at the edge of whether we will get to Inverness.
..I'm forced to make a difficult decision.
If we go steam all the way, I think the answer's probably no.
Whoa! BLEEP!
Subtitles by Red Bee Media