Some 150 years ago, our Victorian forebears built
a railway system that was the envy of the world.
TRAIN HORN BLOWS
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.
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? CHEERING
Building a railway line 70-plus miles
across the breadth of Scotland.
That is our track, boys and girls. Yay! Woo!
After nine gruelling days...
Is this what you envisioned when you signed up to this project?
Absolutely!
..our loco is only just past halfway.
Phew. HE LAUGHS
Now, with just three days left...
Be aware - the train is coming. Go, come on, go!
..our navvies will have to work harder than ever...
See you guys at the bottom.
..to make sure they reach Inverness...
God, I don't even know what day it is any more.
..and complete the world's biggest little railway.
We've got a problem.
Now we're stuck here waiting, so if we can just move it on.
Oh, my God, we're going to be here all day!
That will never get, like it is, to Inverness.
It would be letting people down if the train didn't make it.
Sorry, Dick.
I'm getting drunk, boys. I'm getting mortal.
TRAIN HORN BLOWS
DOG BARKS
Are you being attacked by dogs?
To ensure we reach Inverness, today I need the Silver Lady
to travel 16 miles - further than she's ever run before.
So, you built the track to this section?
All this section, right the way down to the forest road.
At the end of it it's like that...
Right. Excellent.
Good fun, though. Oh, yeah. Right, five to eight...
Let's do it.
We're starting at the top of Invermoriston Hill.
From here, it's a 13-mile push to another daunting climb, Creag Nay -
a mountain on the west side of Loch Ness.
Then it's another 15 miles to Inverness.
But to enter the city, we'll have to tackle our final engineering marvel.
Scaled up. it's a towering 90 metres tall, four-storey helix,
linking the parkland outside Inverness
with the canal path that will lead us to the city itself.
Not again!
See, the, the track's a bit shoddy this morning here.
It's not been the speediest of starts.
The terrain is a lot rougher than yesterday morning,
which is hampering progress.
Ooh, it's gone. Again.
This is absolutely BLEEP.
The track layers are also facing a difficult start.
We've got a rapidly closing window of dry weather.
We really need to get everybody on the bus as quickly as possible.
We are expecting rain, uh, mid-morning,
so it would be nice to get on site as early as possible
and get some work done before we all get soaking wet.
I've got my sun cream as well.
Have you not seen the forecast? Surely you've seen the forecast!
I've seen the forecast. But it's water repellent!
Before the weather closes in, there are five miles of track to lay.
Team D have the steep forest path to tackle on the fearsome Creag Nay.
Teams C, B and A will be building over the top,
towards the hamlet of Abriachan.
If you look over here - "Inverness 17.6 kilometres".
We are the point of the sphere today.
When we finish, we will have less than 10 miles to go to Inverness.
That is amazing! Fantastic.
Lawrence isn't the only one feeling optimistic.
Everyone double check your radios are on channel three.
Mine was on channel four.
The BBC, isn't it, mate?
I think today's going to go well, and I'm also having a bit of fun
with one of my tools that I use at work - something called
a time chainage diagram, I'm going to be keeping today.
Which is a diagram of the distance versus time
just to keep track of what's going on.
And if I have time to fill that in, that means things are going well.
If I stop filling it in, that means I'm busy trying to cope
with whatever's going horribly wrong.
RADIO: Do you have anybody up there who's not actually doing anything?
We do desperately need some personnel
to be sent back down the line. Over.
What kind of skills are you looking for?
The ability to breathe.
I'm finding this hill an ankle killer,
and there's just rocks, rocks and more rocks.
so it's really rough to hike through.
The steep twisting sections of Creag Nay that Team D face...
..will require more than simple track laying.
Go on! Get up there!
So far, we've reversed, winched...
That's it guys, come on!
..and counterweighted our way up steep sections
of the biggest little railway.
But they were all straight climbs,
and here we have harsh gradients, bends and uneven ground.
We're definitely going to need a rack-and-pinion system up there.
So it's definitely an interesting technical challenge,
using our brains for a while, yes.
Mountain railways like this, the Pilatus in Switzerland,
rely on a rack-and-pinion system,
where an additional toothed rack rail
sits between the standard running rails.
The locomotives are fitted with cog wheels - or pinions -
which mesh with the rack rail, driving the train up the slope.
The Pilatus rack and pinion railway reaches an altitude of 2,000 metres.
Creag Nay is 371,
but scaled up, that is over 7,000 metres high to Silver Lady -
like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with Ben Nevis stuck on the top!
I've seen a lot of rack-and-pinion systems.
Even when they're doing it in Switzerland,
they actually have the rack and pinion continuous.
Each company came up with their own design.
So there's the side cog...
Rack-and-pinion systems, known about them since I was 10.
We're often referred to as walking, talking encyclopaedias.
A serious autistic trait, and it's not really a disadvantage.
This is why the term disability can sometimes be a bit of a misnomer,
is that we can remember huge amounts of information, we really can.
Model railways are something that attracts us
because there's so many different things to learn.
How to run the trains on complex operations,
how you're going to signal this layout -
there's a lot of planning. and everything goes into it.
For now, Team D need a plan to install rack-and-pinion
for Silver Lady.
We have a cog in our kit to confirm that everything's working properly.
This cog will be fitted underneath our little engine
and will turn with the standard wheels.
The team are fitting lengths of wood along the centre of the track
and bonding a serrated plastic strip onto its surface.
Once a cog comes into contact with the serrated plastic,
it should grip, providing enough traction to propel Silver Lady
up these savage inclines.
It's a lot of work.
These guys know what they're doing. It just shows this is what...
People in D Team,
we've got specialists in so many different areas,
so this isn't a problem.
I don't know why I'm calling it a problem.
This isn't a problem - this is just a hill.
But for Alex, with only two days left,
there's still one problem that needs solving.
Seems sad not to be able to get a chance to drive the loco.
That's off. There.
Model railways is about creating your own world.
When you've created it, you then get the joy of seeing things run on it.
This isn't staying.
My only chance to enjoy the track I have laid
is actually while it's here.
So I-I... It would be the world to me, it really would.
Right, so, that is 55 and three quarter miles.
It's the time chainage diagram.
Well, that's the graph so far.
So we started, time-wise...
RADIO: Team C, warning, there's a car approaching. Over.
Message received. Thank you, Pip!
Car approaching!
OK, so, we're about three hours in, and distance-wise, we've gone
from zero to well over 0.75.
Uh, now in the real world, of course, on an actual
railway construction project, somebody would have drawn
this up months in advance.
But for today, I'm just using it as record keeping,
and it shows to me that we're doing pretty well today.
THUNDER RUMBLES
BOTH: # I'm singing in the rain! #
I will retreat to your location carrying as much track as I can.
Our track-laying navvies have battled through
the Scottish weather before.
Well, I don't think the glue particularly likes being rained on.
But never on terrain as steep as Creag Nay.
You can't, you can't push it back down.
Enjoying Scotland. As I always do.
It is just dangerous to walk up and down.
Fabulous! Couldn't be better.
This is just too dangerous.
The track layers have downed tools.
Sorry, Dick.
Something their Victorian forbearers would never have got away with.
Throughout the 19th century, wealthy industrialists scrambled
to Parliament to seek approval for lucrative new railway lines.
Once granted, build schedules were relentless,
and safety measures, non-existent.
Laws that had been passed to protect workers didn't apply outside of
a factory, so a navvies workplace was often a death trap.
In 1845, fatalities during the building of the Woodhead Tunnel
between Sheffield and Manchester provoked a national scandal.
It was said you had more chance of surviving the Battle of Waterloo
than the tunnel's construction.
To contain the scandal, Parliament set up a committee,
but one railway company alone
was rumoured to have 80 MPs in its pocket.
So despite hearing damning evidence,
no new laws were passed, and the navvies went unprotected.
Here is the two volunteers. Over.
This lot don't know how lucky they are.
We are soaked, we are wet through,
and the wind-chill is just going to make it worse.
We just don't want people walking back down the tracks,
slipping on these rocks and potentially doing themself a serious injury.
Paul our security has called it a day,
and said, in his opinion, it's no longer safe to be working up here.
We all want to get off this mountain as quick as possible
before we freeze to death.
Perhaps we'll go down the pub - that's extremely nice and cosy.
The good news now is there's continuous track
to mile 59 and beyond.
Sorry to interrupt you, but some of that track is under water.
I'm aware of that.
As the afternoon has gone on, it has become massive great puddles.
We'll get the message back to them that, frankly, tonight,
we're don't so much need a train, as a submarine.
Let's get the BLEEP out of here!
# I hear the train a comin' It's rolling round the bend
# And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when. #
48 hours to go for the biggest little railway.
# And time keeps draggin' on. #
And whilst the weather has forced us to abandon track laying,
on safer terrain, the second train team of the day can still make up ground.
By now we should be on the outskirts of Drumnadrochit but we're still
five miles behind schedule and if we don't get through the town this evening we
will never reach Inverness by the day after tomorrow.
What time is it now? It must be like 10:45.
It's 10:45, yeah.
Hey! Go on, they're racing!
To keep us on track, I've had to make a very painful decision.
We've got a whole day and then Saturday to get to Inverness.
We haven't got the miles that we want to get done so we're, um,
we're doing the night shift. Good evening!
Claire, Hadrian and I are about to embark on the first overnight shift.
Gap here, gap here!
It's gone midnight and it's BLEEP down with rain and, um,
we're steadily going towards Inverness.
We're not doing a terrible speed are we but this is downhill.
Yeah, we've got a couple of miles of downhill, Dick.
So if we get three or four miles under our belt and a mile an hour
is much faster than they managed to achieve today over the cross-country section.
What's that track line plain doing?
Can we join the track together?
Where are they?
Up until now we've been running Silver Lady for 16 hours a day.
Running her for 24 hours a day... Water coming out,
wait until it comes to oil. ..is beginning to take its toll.
It's right on the edge of Dan, isn't it?
Yeah, no we've still got quarter. We're all right for a bit. No, it's good.
Right, it's taking slightly longer than average.
Yeah. Where the hell is this village?
Everything's on the run now. Bloody hell!
This is probably a very beautiful place.
I have no idea where we are.
How are we doing for time? It's about quarter past bloody two.
Thursday morning. Friday morning.
Friday morning! God, I don't even know what day it is any more.
It's an age thing! OK.
It's daytime.
Backwards uphill so we don't spurt water out to regulate our heat on the service.
On! Onward to Inverness!
It would be almost a 34% improvement if me feet were dry.
Yes. Have you got two wet feet?
Yeah! I can't decide though whether it's residual wet from yesterday or fresh wet from today.
Fresh wet. Our overnight shift has given the track layers a bit of a problem.
Silver Lady has begun climbing Creag Nay
and she's catching them up.
Calling Team C. Anybody reading me? Over.
Receiving. Over. Do you have track? Over.
We have track, um, should be inbound on a quadbike.
To get as much track in front of the train as possible...
the teams are joining forces.
Over in that direction the train's coming.
Anybody who is still breathing and walking is on the ground laying track.
45 metres forwards, please.
There's quite a lot of people now.
I know, sorry about that, we've crowded you out a bit.
No, I mean it's lovely to you have you all to help out but,
um, if you could maybe do it elsewhere.
Right, OK. We need a little bit more track than that.
Is that not where the track ends there?
We haven't got enough track from there to get there,
so we need to get track from there.
Where the end of the track was isn't the end of the track.
Well, I'm a team leader, Jen is a team leader.
We haven't got a supreme team leader.
Right, can I just say,
whoever said to chuck this off instead of doing this cos
it's quicker, now we're stuck here waiting.
So if we can just move it on we can actually lay some track.
I understand that but give us a wee minute.
It would have been quicker to do it the way we were doing
instead of the person who's just chucked it in the grass.
I'm the only team leader who's got a diagram and knows what's
going on so perhaps I should do it.
So are we just fighting each other to the death or something?
Hopefully. Basically just follow the track until you get to track.
That's literally what we're going to do.
Working in a somewhat crowded workplace here but we, we,
we believe the train is at mile 56.
Well, yes, uh, reports that we have had it on the section we were at
yesterday slogging up our rack railway as we speak.
Oh, they've put a rack in the middle.
The rack, it would sort of engage with the pinion underneath
the loco and therefore it virtually walks itself up the incline.
At least that's the theory.
You can see it's just unsteady because it's sat on the rack in the centre.
This rack rail is too high.
With only the cog and not the loco,
the track team were unable to properly test the rack and pinion railway.
Once fitted to the engine,
the cog is coming into contact with the rack rail two milometers too high
so the standard rails aren't engaging properly with the outer rails leaving
Silver Lady balancing precariously and wobbling.
I think we need to take this rack out.
The rack that they're laying is actually causing more of a hindrance than it is,
um, you know, helping us.
We're in danger of losing all that vital ground we had made up in the
overnight shift.
We've got a problem which is obviously getting up the hill.
If the cog's not gonna get us up there we're gonna have to winch up.
So we're going whittle this until we can get it into the battery drill,
wrap our string round it,
wind it out and then we'll use it as a makeshift winch.
Where's the winch cable?
Tell me when you're ready! I'm on a drill now.
Try to move forward.
Let's go!
Good! Hold!
Is he pulling it? Stop a minute.
Spin it round. That feels like a good solution but give it time,
give it time. Take the strain.
I want it up there, I don't care what it looks like, get it up.
The winch helps the loco stay on the track a bit better actually.
This is ridiculous! Four hours to get to the top of this hill.
Hang on, wait a minute! Just wait!
I...
I suppose we don't...
he doesn't know how we're going to do it. OK, so ready to go?
Go, go, go! 16 times 3 is roughly 45 metres so
we need to go 45 metres.
Paul, you better go and tell them, then.
We're all going to go through phases where we just wanna be alone,
we want to do things by ourselves, we want to go out on our own.
I've done that bit.
I've discovered teamwork is essential in laying a railway.
We can, we are winning and we are so close now it's unbelievable.
Look at the view!
Oh, wow! Look at that!
That's Inverness. Oh, my God!
I can't believe it, we've made it.
Nothing's going to stop us now, nothing at all.
Come on, let's lay some track.
But just as the end is in sight for the track layers...
It's been a bit crap actually.
The gradients has been such where the burner just extinguishes itself
and it's just fatigue is setting in.
Oh, my God, we're going to be here all day!
That will never get like it is to Inverness.
Here he is, chief engineer Chris.
The train team have had to call in Chris to perform some emergency repairs.
It's not looking good for Silver Lady and the biggest little railway.
You should be proud of yourself that you got this far.
How many times can you rebuild these?
If you've got the spares you can rebuild them quite a lot.
Right, now I'm starting to run short on some things.
Word of Silver Lady's woes is starting to spread.
Train not reached 56 miles yet.
The problem we've got there then, that's come loose.
Making slow progress through very difficult terrain.
Here. Can you see all the dirt?
Looking touch-and-go whether we'll make it there tomorrow.
Please pass on message to your teams.
It's not gonna make it.
Oh, dear!
We haven't walked all this way, laid all this track, climbed mountains,
gone through woodlands, to not see that train get there.
It would be letting people down if the train didn't make it.
Struggling to repair him.
We've been plagued with little issues throughout this whole project,
if we let them get to us we will never finish.
We're emulating the Victorians here, we, we don't just stay put,
we go ahead, forge on, find a solution.
Whilst he continues extensive repairs to Silver Lady,
Chris may have a solution.
One way or another we'll be in Inverness.
An alternative loco.
What would you prefer it to be?
Oh, I think I'd, I'd like it to be an N class, South Eastern railway N class.
Oh! GWR King. I'm afraid I'm a Midland man, it would have to be a Black 5, sorry. Black 5.
The good thing is it could be all things to all people.
That's it. Most engines look the same front on.
We've brought back little John, our battery powered diesel.
We've now got this thing, uh, while Silver Lady's having a tune up.
Yesterday Dakota was saying Silver Lady has the personality of a fox.
What kind of personality has this electric loco got?
Um...
..would it be incredibly mean of me to say it hasn't got one?
Nah, see,
the thing is, Silver Lady, you've gotta manage her.
You've gotta make sure she's got the right amount of gas,
right amount of water, you've got to oil her in all the right places.
That's what gives her a personality.
With something like this it's press a button and go,
it needs no care or attention whatsoever.
So not as much fun
and you can't really say it's got a personality cos,
well, your interaction with it is very minimal.
But Martin has a way to fix that.
Who's the Ronald? Uh, Ronald is my little rhino that the kids give me for my birthday.
It just reminds me of them.
Does that finally give it some personality?
The rhino has personality.
I'm still not sold on the locomotive.
Chris, we ordered a faster engine, mate!
Whoa! Whoa, OK.
Right, let's go. I was worried for a minute there.
Oh, look at that!
The whole project has been behind, behind, behind and on the last night
to leave it ahead would just be like, yeah.
It's tangible, it's achievable, it's right there in front of us.
Yeah, it's a bad boy. After five hours... The end of the line.
..Ronald and Co have taken little John to the 64-mile marker.
Yay!
Well done everybody! Come on, come on, bring it in, guys.
Oh, yes! Come on!
He's still going! Ronald! Ronald!
Ronald!
A bit further on, you can see...
the city and the town.
Is it a city? Yeah, city, yeah.
Sorry, I need a drink.
It's a 7:00am start for the train crew,
and they're taking a risk.
We want the actual engine that we started the journey with
going into Inverness. I'm not one of these that has a bucket list.
I just have a wish list of things I'd like to do.
One of which is to come back here and walk the Great Glen Way.
On your walking holiday. On my walking...
On my free walking holiday, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we're away.
Hey!
Battered and more than a little temperamental,
Silver Lady has been out of service for 16 hours.
Got to be a bit careful with it first of all.
But now it's down to her to complete the final push into Inverness.
We're not going to the diesel now.
This is making it. This is making it.
It's running fine.
Our final approach involves crossing the A82, tackling roundabouts,
the Caledonian Canal and the River Ness.
But before all of that, we're headed for our final engineering marvel,
the incredible helix.
Is that Inverness? Bloody hell, it's been a long time coming.
What we need now is the David Attenborough narration.
HE IMITATES DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: And here we see three idiots
walking a steam engine through a field.
Forward gear.
Well, actually, you could be Compo.
Oh, for BLEEP sake.
Five and a half miles ahead of the train is Inverness Station.
Opened in 1855, it was to become the terminus of a railway line
that connected the city with Glasgow.
Cheaper to build and with faster journey times,
this was the line that killed off the Victorians' ambition
to run trains along the Great Glen Way.
Ending the biggest little railway here would be sacrilege.
High above the city on the east bank of the River Ness
sits Inverness Castle.
In its ground stands the statue of Flora MacDonald,
who in 1746 risked her life by defying the British government
and even her own family to help bonny Prince Charlie
escape Scotland after he was defeated at the Battle of Culloden.
A daring Scottish heroine that's hopefully about to meet another.
This is our end point, and we've been tasked with building
from here all the way back.
We're gonna meet up with Team C and they're gonna meet up
with Team B and they're gonna meet up with Team A,
and they presumably will meet up with where we were yesterday.
And then the trains are gonna come through and this is
gonna be party central.
But for some, that party's already begun.
The layout took us four weeks to make.
We couldn't actually start on the layout until we'd got the track.
It's not exactly to the standard that we would normally do a model,
simply because the track that we've had to use to bring the loco in
is not the standard track that we would use on a layout.
Three tier platform system.
We've got two different point systems.
The stop will not be within keeping as such,
because they're Southern Region you see, SR.
Predominantly, it will be Caledonian Railway on this system.
OK.
It's absolutely fine.
Just be advised, the track van appears to have just arrived now.
Before we can reach our terminus, Dakota and Team D
will have to lay one mile of track from the castle back
to a bridge over the River Ness.
From there, Team C take over, linking up with Team B
by the Caledonian Canal,
who will meet Team A on the city's outskirts.
We're just checking the site cos it is extremely muddy.
This is the most difficult section, down the hill.
This is the stuff we do in our sleep.
So we get through the muddy bit, we get out onto this pavement
and we therefore proceed forward.
We are heading for that castle.
To be walking through country tracks in the middle of
beautiful countryside, but quite remote in places,
and then being... Well, basically doing it through a housing estate.
It's a real culture shock, really.
To date, we've seen very few people, and most of them have been
focusing on why they're on the Great Glen trail.
Now we're going past people's front doors, who are likely to be in.
It makes you feel a bit odd doing this here.
INAUDIBLE SHOUTS
Some local residents have begun shouting at our navvies.
Can you raise security and just tell them that we're getting
a bit of jip?
The flat behind us, already we've heard a little bit of verbal...
So I have a feeling that they're still on Friday night time
rather than Saturday morning time. I was just gonna say that to you.
They'll have had a Friday night out on the town. Absolutely.
Yes, nice to have a local greeting.
Ruffians. Rough ones, which we've encountered before.
I actually didn't quite catch what he was saying.
I have a feeling however that he didn't want to be disturbed early
on a Saturday morning. I know how he feels.
If anybody disturbs me on Monday, they'll get very short shrift
from me as well. It's 24 hours of sleep for me on Monday.
It does feel a bit more, ooh, under the spotlight.
And for those teams going... When we go through the town centre, it might
be another experience again to be like, you know...
..in a goldfish bowl, really.
Right, forwards.
They've had a long way to come.
And I just read about it on Google as well.
We're going to be laying on the road,
or laying track on the road, not ourselves laying on the road.
Laying track on the road is quite complicated.
There is road traffic management rules to follow,
we all have to be in full high vis.
We're going to be moving forwards altogether as a nice, efficient,
safe unit to get this done as pleasantly as we can.
I think really though it's wonderful that we've had such a great location
for the last day. I mean, we've had views of Loch Ness,
we've kind of gone a long way along Glen Way,
and today, today we have...
..a pavement. Well, don't knock it cos, you know,
over there we've got glorious views of the
new Inverness bypass roundabout. I'm quite excited about that.
Yeah, well you should be, a civil engineer over here.
We're heading towards Team D. They're coming towards to meet us,
so it'll be another nice union between teams C and D.
Hi, this is Team D calling Team C.
You there? Over.
But that union won't be happening any time soon.
Please get them back as fast as possible at the van. Over.
Away from the main roads, amongst Inverness' public parks...
I think that's a critical path.
Send anybody you can. Roger that.
..Team D are struggling to keep their navvies supplied with track.
I need to get him cracking.
It wouldn't be the final day without another little hiccup.
100, what, back there? Up here! Why did he point that way then?
When we get the track, we could have done it by now.
We've had, what, probably half an hour, 40 minutes wasted today,
bloody waiting for track.
I just heard. I'm just at the one-mile marker.
Oh, it's frustrating, I just...
It's getting to be a little bit of a worry now cos it's gonna come,
it's gonna stop, and we don't wanna be the ones
that sourpuss all this up.
I don't think we're the ones that are gonna sourpuss it up.
So where is the train?
After panicking we won't make it,
we're actually well ahead of schedule now.
Um...
That's not good, is it?
Crazy, innit?
Guys, please be aware, the train is coming.
They're putting in the road closures.
That means we've got less than 15 minutes
before the train is upon us.
It's Wallace and Gromit time.
The train is coming, everyone.
Don't panic! Don't panic! Come on, lads!
We always knew that this... We had the first section this morning,
B would have their bit started,
but we've gotta connect up to get the train still on time.
Under pressure!
Push!
I now have the eyes on the rail head and we're properly into
the 50 to 60 lengths, including what is here. Over.
Oh, bloody hell! They just kept on feeding it.
I was trying to tell them to bring it down,
they wouldn't bring it down.
We need to get a lot more track down here.
It's straight.
Copy that, Lawrence. We're coming as quickly as we possibly can.
I'm not gonna be the reason it's delayed.
We've gotta get this track down.
Is that them that are...? That's them behind us, yes.
That's the advanced track team coming down making sure
everything's sorted for the loco. See when we get round the corner
and we hit the track build teams, do you want to pile on the pressure? "Go, go, go! Train coming!"
Today's our last chance to complete the biggest little railway...
ON RADIO: He has track and we are inbound with railhead. Over.
..but Silver Lady is now travelling so fast,
she could run out of track,
leaving her stranded outside Inverness.
Team A still have to connect
with Team B on the outskirts
of the city, and Teams C and D
have yet to meet in the park
on the River Ness. Currently,
there's no way through
to our terminus at the castle.
Track is snaking past you as I talk.
We need to get the train through to Inverness Castle.
At this point, we are the Schwerpunkt,
as the Germans say - the point of attack.
I have no time for the Nazis, I have no time for nationalism,
I'm just trying to use the right word for the right situation.
Yes! See you guys at the bottom.
ON RADIO: Team C, Paul, to Team D, I will meet you as soon as possible.
Roger. We've got about 250m left,
but as usual, we're waiting for track.
Traveller from afar.
We're on the island at the far end, but we've just run out of track.
Right, we've got track, but no fishplates.
For the second time in 24 hours...
As much as we can, cos I don't want to run out again.
..Teams C and D are joining forces.
Confusion will now reign supreme.
That's the problem with two teams - it just gets mental.
We're just literally down there.
The sections today have been a little bit on the fluid side,
as is ever the case, but the official border is this bridge here.
So, we will then be advancing across the border into Section D territory.
I don't want Team C to, like, go past our cone
cos then we'll never hear the end of it, as well.
That's the other problem.
It will be a very satisfying way to end the final day
with Team C coming to the assistance of Team D,
well within Team D's territory, I'm hoping.
DRILL WHIRS
It's train time!
Yes! Come on!
Well done. Section A complete and ready for...
Cameron. Good. We better get down it.
Well done. Let's get down it, then. CHEERING
Onward to the castle!
All stations, all stations, just got real.
Train is in the section preceding us.
It is nearly here.
We need to get this done, dusted and finished. Over.
But first, before she reaches Teams C and D,
Silver Lady faces one final challenge.
Bloody hell! Oh, my God! That looks amazing!
To reach the towpath that will lead us into Inverness,
Silver Lady faces a 90m climb in scale terms.
If she can't make it up this quadruple helix,
the dream of a model railway from Fort William to Inverness is over.
Better not fall off.
The special build team have surpassed themselves.
They really have. This is probably the most ambitious thing
that's been built, isn't it? They are really, really nervous,
my boys, and that's why a few of them have scarpered.
Concerned. We haven't tested it, so...
..the first test is the one and only time the thing goes up it,
which is probably not ideal.
If it goes up to the top without any hiccups, I'm pleased with it.
If it doesn't, it's nothing to do with me.
Oh, I can see it! Can you? Yeah, just there!
Ooh! Ooh!
Just going to go for it? All right. Yeah, OK.
Away we go! Yeah!
After just one turn, we're the equivalent of 25m off the ground.
If she falls, the boiler on Silver Lady could explode.
Push. Easy, easy, easy. Easy.
Push, push, push!
Oh, oh, oh, oh! Come on, Andy!
This is getting friggin' high, this. That's the idea.
Just give it a minute.
It's tense.
Come on, Silver Lady! Whey! Get up there!
Keep it going. That's flat-out.
HE EXHALES
On the final and highest turn...
I think the fire blew out.
..after nearly 1,000 miles in scale terms,
Silver Lady is struggling.
Altitude's hitting us.
OK. OK, we're ready! What's going on here? I don't know.
You're not going to believe this, but the batteries have died.
Right, hold on. Hold on.
Oh!
3m from the exit and 5m off the ground, we've derailed.
Erm... Nick! OK. Oh, Nick.
Stand back, please. Could somebody put their hand on my back?
Right, somebody needs to steady me.
Whose shoulders is he standing on?
Derek's. Is there any good place to pick it up?
Just take a step back. That's the one.
I think that's it. Coming in. Ready? Here we go.
CHEERING
Yes! CHEERING
Aw, Joe. Well done, Joe. Well done.
Two miles to go. Jesus!
There's a book for kids called The Little Train That Could,
and that is the little train that could.
Two miles to the castle.
The little train is coming and coming and coming as quick as it can
and there's some great big gaps still left for it to sort of
stop at and wait and miss the party at that end.
So, with that, I'm going to head in this direction
and start fishplating track and doing what I can.
Thank you very much.
ON RADIO: There's 0.1 of a mile to our end location.
How much more track have you got that side of the bridge? Quite a lot. Like, 70-odd pieces.
Lots of townspeople have come out to see the train.
The railhead is advancing in two directions.
Is it a steam engine?
To me, to you. To you, to me.
And are we in? Are we in? Let it go. Let it go.
CHEERING
I just want to see that little green train come through now.
It's going to get to that castle and then I am...
I'm getting drunk, boys. I'm going to... I'm getting mortal.
Aye.
Won't be long now.
I can see some steam.
You can see some steam? Is that a good sign?
Shall we do a little whistle? HE WHISTLES
Oh, there it is there! SHE LAUGHS
She's had a hard life, bless her, but she's still going.
How fast does this go? Too fast for you.
We started this two weeks ago with a lot of people that said,
"You know, you'll never do it.
"You'll have fun trying, but you'll never do it."
One mile to go, teams! One mile!
I'm by no means perfect at making friends.
As autistic, it's the interpersonal skills
that tend to fall down.
While we are not necessarily interested
in socialising constantly, we do feel lonely. We are human.
It's finding the right way to make friends,
and this was definitely a great way to make friends.
Right, clear your hands. Yeah, my hands are clear.
Alex will be responsible for driving Silver Lady
for the final stage of the biggest little railway.
Almost there. It's in sight.
Come on, everybody! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
BAGPIPES PLAY
CHEERING
WILD CHEERING
Let's hear it for the world's biggest little railway!
CHEERING
There are 56 volunteers
who have been involved in getting from Fort William to Inverness.
Has anybody else done that ever in the world?
ALL: No!
You are brilliant.
A phenomenal effort. A phenomenal effort.
And do you know what? I think it's time to party.
BAGPIPES PLAY, CHEERING
Congratulations, and thank you, everybody!
Oh, we've done it! HE LAUGHS
Possibly the most surreal and beautiful thing
I have ever seen as a railway enthusiast.
That train has been through hell, bless her.
She deserves her retirement.
I like the way it was all battered and beaten and it was still going.
I like that. A bit like us. Yeah. Yeah, it's a metaphor for life.
Even if you're battered and beaten, just keep going.
# Sing me a song
# Of a lass that is gone
You can't... You can't put into words how it feels to do this.
# Say, could that lass be I?
I'm just in awe, really.
I'm in awe of what everyone has managed to achieve.
Erm, it's...
It's something I thought was impossible at many times.
# Merry of soul, she sailed on a day
I shall be embarrassing my wife furiously.
Incredible. Just incredible.
# Over the sea
Oh!
Sorry.
# To Skye
Rhino! He is here! Rhino! MAN LAUGHS
He's a little bit dirty, but he drove...
He drove the little electric train.
And what are you going to take away from all this? Friends.
Basically, yeah.
Oh, like a pro.
Oh, my God! Are you crying? Oh, my God!
This piece of track.
Right, three cheers for Inverness. Hip hip! ALL: Hurray!
Hip hip! Hurray! Hip hip! Hurray!
# Sing me a song of a lass that is gone
# Say, could that lass be I?
# Merry of soul, she sailed on a day
# Over the sea
# To Skye. #
Subtitles by Red Bee Media