Michael Portillo's 200 Years of the Railways (2025- )

Railway enthusiast and former politician Michael Portillo continues his celebration of the birth of the modern railway. He looks at the transformative effect of railways on Britain by travelling on the world's first intercity line between Liverpool and Manchester, which opened in 1830.

Michael begins in Derby at ‘The Greatest Gathering', the largest ever collection of locomotives in one place, drawing crowds of 40,000 people.

In Manchester, he steps back in time to the world's first intercity line. Walking the Bridgewater Canal, he hears how the cotton trade drove its creation. At Quarry Bank Mill, he learns how the railway boosted production and changed lives.

At the National Football Museum, he discovers how trains helped turn football into a national game. He visits Chat Moss, where George Stephenson built a floating railway over a bog, and stops at Rainhill to see where Rocket famously proved that steam locomotives would shape the future of rail.

In Liverpool, he hears how novelist Elizabeth Gaskell captured the spirit of the railway age. And in Yorkshire, he traces the rise and fall of George Hudson, the ‘Railway King'. Michael ends his journey back in Derby, at the spectacular gathering of locomotives from the last 200 years.