Season 1 - Episode Guide

How Britain, and the Industrial Revolution led to the birth of the steam train and how, within decades, locomotives had changed daily life forever.

In 1829, Stephenson's Rocket won a competition to create the fastest train to haul coal on the first commercial railway line in the world.

From the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard to the Burlington Zephyr, the race for modernity pushes trains into a new world. With different fuels, American art deco design and shiny metals, the results are the sexiest trains ever built.

Giant four-mile long trains, each one pulling enough iron ore to build two Eiffel towers. This episode looks at how freight trains built the modern world - the unsung hero of the railways - the leviathan that keeps the world on track.

From the glamour of the Orient Express, to the robotic efficiency of the latest transit systems, this is the story of the passenger train. The first trains were invented to carry coal, not people, but people were desperate to ride in them. This episode describes what happened next.

China is the champion of high-speed rail and 75 million people now live within an hour's commute of Shanghai - more than the entire population of the UK