Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways

Chris embarks on a rail trip across Vietnam, exploring its French colonial history along the way, as he sets off along the Reunification Line from Ho Chi Minh in the south - to Hanoi in the north.

In this episode, Chris embarks on a thousand mile journey across Spain’s complex railway system, from Gibraltar in the far south to Bermio on the north coast, deep in Basque Country. Travelling on an extraordinary range of different trains and types of track, he’s on a mission to find out how Spanish railways evolved from some of the most backward in Europe to the most advanced and innovative in the World, through one and a half centuries of stormy history, including the Civil War and four dark decades of the Franco dictatorship.

Chris Tarrant explores the darkest chapter in the history of the railways, their role in the Nazi Holocaust of WWII. Traveling through three countries, he takes a railway journey that will chronicle how the Holocaust evolved during a 10 year period from 1935 to 1945, starting in Nuremberg and ending at the death camps of Auschwitz. The programme explores the history step-by-step, starting with the implementation of the first anti-Jewish laws and the Nazi’s simultaneous quest to build the world’s most powerful railway. Chris investigates how thousands of trains involved in the war were also used to deport millions to ghettos and death camps. He meets holocaust survivors who suffered for days on board cattle trucks and hears their tales of horror, death and heroic acts of bravery. He meets people who worked on the railways and historians who will argue that the Holocaust was neither planned nor inevitable and that it wouldn’t have been possible on such a scale without Hitler’s railways.

Chris attempts to cross the five countries of the Balkan region in six days. Travelling from Slovenia to Montenegro, via Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, he discovers how the former state-run Yugoslav railways in Tito's days are faring since their break-up in the 1990s, goes in search of Tito's famous blue train and talks to some fascinating local people en route.

Chris Tarrant traverses Morocco, heading for the Sahara.

Chris Tarrant takes a train trip through northern Scandinavia's winter wonderland, visiting the northern reaches of Norway, Sweden, Lapland and Finland. Included is a trip to the North Pole to visit a well-known resident.

Chris Tarrant travels 1500 miles from Cape Town in South Africa across Botswana to the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, following the route of a mind-bogglingly ambitious railway pioneered by controversial 19th century British Colonialist, Cecil Rhodes.

Chris Tarrant heads to the Arctic to explore a railway which probably should never have been built, the Alaska Railroad. Constructed when the USA's largest state was barely populated, Chris wants to find out how and why it has become such a success.

Documentary series in which Chris Tarrant explores the world's most extreme railway lines. Chris discovers how a 2,500-mile transcontinental railway was built against huge odds in just a few decades, and turned a vast wilderness of isolated communities into the country we now know as Canada.

Chris attempts to cross the length of Cuba, the only island in the Caribbean to boast an extensive railway network, from Havana in the west to the far east of the island.

Chris continues his exploration of the world's most extreme railway lines. He attempts to cross the Andes, setting off from the coast of Chile and heading for the Bolivian capital of Sucre. Along the way he traverses some of the driest and most inhospitable environments on the planet, hitches rides on unusual trains and deals with altitude sickness at more than 3,000 metres.

In the last instalment of his interesting travelogue of extreme railway journeys across the world’s toughest terrains, presenter Chris Tarrant takes a trip through India on the Konkan line. The Konkan railway runs down the west coast of India, connecting the port cities of Mumbai and Mangalore. While the British built 40,000 miles of track across the vast sub-continent, they stayed clear of this narrow, boggy strip of land as it was deemed too treacherous and difficult to build on. As a result, western India remained undeveloped, until a brave Indian engineer took on the daunting task. Known as ‘The People’s Railway’, the line opened in January 1998, finally connecting the remote villages along the route to the outside world. Chris starts his journey at dawn in Mumbai, India’s financial capital and home to Bollywood. The ‘Mandovi Express’ is the first of many trains he catches along the 472miles of track running through the states of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.

This week, Chris is in the Republic of the Congo to experience one of the greatest surviving African railways of the colonial era. Built by French colonists at a cost of tens of thousands of African lives, this railway connects the capital of Brazzaville, far inland on the Congo River, to the coast 310miles away. It has remained a vital lifeline for both people and freight in a country with few roads and thousands of square of miles of jungle. Since its opening in 1934, the Congolese have done everything in their power to keep the railway open, even during the civil wars of the 1990s when the railway was deliberately targeted by guerrillas. Chris sets off from the overcrowded station at the port of Pointe-Noire to travel through the jungle to Brazzaville. With a few stops along the way, Chris is prepared for a gruelling two-day journey. Six days and a whole series of setbacks later, he finally arrives at his destination.