The Railway: Keeping Britain on Track - Season 1

Documentary following the staff at London's King's Cross station, the gateway to Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh for the 47 million people who travel through the station every year.

The 1970s concourse at King's Cross is cramped and dark, doing nothing to help the spirits of the passengers - something that Alexis, who works on the passenger information point, knows all too well from her experience of dealing with frustrated travellers. Steve, who sells tickets in the travel centre, says he regularly relies on his conflict resolution training.

There is hope that a brand new concourse will lift everyone's spirits. East Coast manager Steve Newland wants the opening to coincide with customer service levels worthy of a five-star hotel, a vision that is frustrated when broken-down trains and fatalities on the line bring everything to a standstill.

Laxman has worked at the station for 35 years, during which time he has witnessed both an IRA bombing and the King's Cross fire. He is a much-loved staff member but will not be there to see the new concourse filled with passengers, as retirement beckons. His last day at work is a very sad one for everyone at the station.

Documentary following the staff, passengers and police officers on the railways in and around Leeds during summer. This is the most challenging season for staff, when binge drinkers, cable thieves and trespassers all threaten to delay the trains.

For driver Jason, driving the trains on the 'Real Ale Trail', a pub crawl by train, is the most dreaded shift of the week as drunken partygoers fill his carriages and begin to stumble across the tracks to catch their trains but the real-alers think of it all as harmless fun.

Elsewhere, when a teenager is killed after trespassing on the track, British Transport Police officer Craig has the difficult task of breaking the news to the boy's mother.

To add to the challenges for the staff running the trains in and out of Leeds, it is the wettest summer in a century and flooding brings the network to a standstill. With costly fines for every minute of delay, just one day of flooding costs the industry over a million pounds and ruins thousands of passengers' days.

Some of the most overcrowded trains in Britain are the rush hour trains between Reading and Paddington, and every morning, thousands of commuters resignedly squeeze on to packed trains at Reading. It's a packed schedule and when a train accidentally cuts through some vital signalling cables, the track staff are under intense pressure from their bosses to get the hundreds of irate passengers on the move again.

There's good news though - a multi billion pound overhaul of the line will bring faster, longer and more trains to the route, but to get there, the commuters have to endure line closures, building works and delays. For the railway staff, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place - as many people complain if they do the work, as those who complain if they don't. With Christmas approaching and Paddington empty for the holidays, up the line in Reading, hundreds of track workers are putting the festivities on hold with just three days to knock down and rebuild an entire bridge and re-build the platforms.

The West Coast Mainline is the busiest route in Europe - linking London to Glasgow with Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool in between.

Despite an unprecedented £9bn upgrade just a few years ago, already this line is straining under a jam-packed schedule and ever growing passenger numbers. Quite simply, this line is full up. With 4,000 trains on the route every day, signal boxes that still rely on Victorian lever technology, and the window for maintenance smaller than it has ever been, the staff are under pressure just to maintain the status quo - and when engineering upgrade work happens to fall on the FA Cup final weekend, the railway staff find themselves even more unpopular than usual.

With so many trains squeezed on this route, just a small problem can quickly throw the line into chaos. When a train breaks down in the middle of the line, train manager Matt has to roll up his sleeves and go trackside to check the train, while the staff on the customer information point at London Euston face the increasingly frustrated passengers.

With 20,000 miles of track and seven million neighbours, the railway has to manage its local communities as best it can. Millions of pounds are spent on the track teams who deal with fly-tipping and picking up dog mess thrown on the track. The MerseyRail revenue inspectors must try to clamp down on ticket evasion while having to deal with drunk passengers.

In the Welsh Valleys, a line that was closed in the 1960s has been reopened, helping to regenerate the area. Slovakian Lukas finds that his new job as a train guard not only helps him to become a fully fledged Welshman but also, he admits, a bit of a trainspotter. But not all communities welcome the railway - when Network Rail wants to close a manned level-crossing box in a picturesque village and move it up the line for safety reasons, they have to contend with the locals intent on keeping 'their' level-crossing keeper.

From some of the UK's busiest urban commuter routes to frozen highland mountains, keeping trains running on Scotland's rail network is a huge challenge. With winter looming large, the country's train, station and engineering staff are entering their toughest season.

When overhead power lines are ripped down by a freight train, it spells chaos for the country's West Coast Main Line and days of disruption for passengers at Glasgow Central Station. Yet even without engineering problems, this is a network under constant strain.

Scotland's trains have to cope with millions of foreign visitors every year - most them using Edinburgh Waverley Station. Every day, dispatcher Ronnie Park has to guide thousands of confused tourists as they rush for their trains, whilst Parisian cleaner Patrice and his team have just 10 minutes to make trains sparkle before their onward journeys. Even when services are running smoothly it is a challenging place to work - but when delays south of the border impact on Edinburgh's rush hour, the task for Ronnie and his colleagues becomes almost impossible.

Yet what really makes Scotland stand out from the rest of the UK are its vast and remote wilderness railways, such as the West Highland Line. This is where rail engineer Iain MacKinnon spends his days inspecting miles of mountain track on foot, clearing dead stags from the line and tightening every loose bolt that he finds. It is a lonesome job but 'a beautiful place to work' and it keeps the Scottish railways running.