Two-hundred years of trains
Sep 26, 2025•49 min
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Episode description
This week marks 200 years since the first steam train pulled passengers over 26 miles of north-east England’s countryside, and started a revolution. Jump on board for show filled with train tales.
We explore Mumbai’s lunch delivery system – train based, of course, which has the sort of error rate that delivery firms arounds the world can only dream of. We ask what it takes to run a railway on time, and look at how the bullet train changed Japan, with history professor Jessamyn Abel.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producers: Margaret Sessa-Hawkins with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Robbie Wojciechowski, Lucy Davies
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