Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00100 years of global war can only be understood by uncovering the story of these revolutionary
00:11machines.
00:14They carried terrifying weapons that made the beach out of loving hell and brought millions
00:26of men to the heart of the conflict.
00:29It was the first time in history that anyone had ever used a train in conjunction with
00:35moving troops to a battlefield.
00:38They saved many lives at great risk.
00:43Ambulance trains are vulnerable both in the station and on the rails.
00:46The bottom line is this is a train in a war zone.
00:52But they also inspired terrible cruelty.
00:55The Japanese wanted to build this railway regardless of the cost in human lives.
01:03My father looked out that little window and he announced to everyone that we're heading
01:07for Poland.
01:10The scale and extent of the Holocaust would not have been possible without an efficient
01:16and functioning railway.
01:20These metal monsters transformed the art of war.
01:25The locomotive's speed and power could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
01:50This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note
01:57stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once
02:06to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.
02:14I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this
02:22country is at war with Germany.
02:30Between 1939 and 1945 war came to Britain's railways.
02:37New trains had to be built and high-tech ones given a makeover.
02:43Those in charge created secret underground HQs.
02:49During the war the railways were the lifeline of the nation.
02:52They kept Britain going.
02:53The railways were the home front.
02:55Hundreds of trains brought troops back home and took children to safety.
03:00I thought from my point of view that it was going to be a great adventure.
03:05And Britain's rail network helped supply the biggest amphibious invasion the world has
03:11ever known.
03:21Deep under the upmarket district of Mayfair is the underground station of Down Street.
03:27It hasn't seen a paying passenger for over 80 years.
03:37Because it's in a rather posh part of London, the people who lived around here were too
03:42lofty to probably use the Tube very much.
03:45So it closed in 1932, but it had an ideal new prospect when the war approached in 1938.
03:56The British government was looking for somewhere to house a group of administrators whose powers
04:02would extend across a nation preparing for war.
04:05The Emergency Powers Act was passed in 1938, and this allowed the government to take control
04:10of all the transport in Britain, the docks, the lorries, the railways.
04:14And the idea was that you could keep Britain moving.
04:17It would keep supplies moving round the arteries of the nation.
04:21Britain's railways at the time were a collection of private companies, each with their own
04:26locomotives and track.
04:28The four big railway companies had to be brought under government control.
04:33So there had to be a single way of operating the railways, which was so crucial for everything
04:39that happened during the war.
04:41This vital and far-reaching work was to be masterminded by an organisation who last met
04:46in the First World War, the Railway Executive Committee.
04:51The RAC had to organise almost every aspect of the war, the evacuation of the children
04:57from the big cities, the evacuation from Dunkirk, the organisation of D-Day.
05:01But there were other things.
05:03The railway workshops were turned into munitions factories.
05:06The whole railway timetable had to be turned upside down, because normally railways run
05:11like clockwork.
05:12But in this case, the railway had to run the opposite of clockwork, because special troop
05:18trains had to be laid on, blackouts had to be organised, gas masks had to be distributed.
05:24The RAC was in charge of everything.
05:28The all-powerful committee needed secure headquarters, and Down Street ticked all the
05:33boxes.
05:35It was a secret location, and it was fairly secure from bombs, because we're very deep
05:41below the street.
05:42It's 103 steps from here to the surface of Mayfair above us.
05:49So work commenced, turning these abandoned tunnels and shafts into a secret command centre.
05:56This would have been an absolutely busy, bustling place, people dictating letters,
06:00people planning strategy.
06:02Some of the most important people in Britain would come here to brief and to be debriefed.
06:08Visitors to Down Street had their own unique encounter with the railway.
06:13Let's think where we are.
06:15We're on the platform of the station.
06:17On the other side of the wall was a secret door, and people would travel in the cab of
06:21the tube train, and a special signal would stop the train just at the point where that
06:26door behind me was, and they would come through secretly into the station, and nobody knew
06:32about it.
06:33They had to build this wall during the night, because otherwise the passengers wouldn't
06:37know what was going on.
06:41One regular visitor from May 1940 was the Prime Minister himself.
06:46The spirit of Winston Churchill pervaded this place.
06:50He would frequently come to visit the Railway Executive Committee, but he liked to come
06:54here simply to work, because it was a secure place.
06:58He is said to have taken a bath here.
07:01He is said to have come and had meals here.
07:04It's even said that he got stuck in the lift coming down here.
07:09I wouldn't have liked to have been the official who was on the wrong side of Winston Churchill
07:13when he got stuck in the lift.
07:16I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister in a solemn hour for the life of
07:23our country, of our empire, of our allies, and above all, of the cause of freedom.
07:33Down Street was one of the most important single locations of the entire war, because
07:38almost every movement in Britain was focused through this nerve centre here.
07:47It's quite amazing to think how all these important relays and messages were once sent
07:52through this old telephone exchange, affecting the outcome of the war.
07:58It's just fantastic to soak up the atmosphere of this old place.
08:01You can almost feel it as it was all those years ago.
08:12One of the first tasks of the Railway Executive Committee was an awesome assignment, to move
08:17the greatest number of people the railways had ever known.
08:25Gordon Abbott is on a train steaming through the English countryside.
08:3075 years ago, he made a similar journey.
08:35Gordon was one of the three million children who were moved from British cities to escape
08:39German bombs.
08:42On the 16th of June 1940, I was evacuated with 240 other children from my school, and
08:51on that particular day, we all assembled in St John's Hill, not far from the school.
08:57I can't really recall whether my parents were crying or not, but I'm sure that many
09:01parents who were saying goodbye to their children, because parents weren't allowed to go to
09:06the stations.
09:07They think it would disrupt the whole question of the evacuation procedure.
09:15Really the government saw the evacuation of children from urban centres as being a priority,
09:20because these were going to be the areas that were considered vulnerable to attack, because
09:25they were strategic targets to knock out factories, to knock out areas which were producing
09:31war material that could help the war effort after it had begun.
09:36The elaborate evacuation plans had been in place for many years.
09:43During the First World War, civilians had been bombed in their own homes by zeppelins
09:47and by aircraft.
09:49Many people had died, and that led to a real concern that in the event of a future war,
09:54that there would be much greater bombing, that mass bombing would cause many, many deaths.
10:00That led to planning over the 1920s and into the 1930s, particularly as with the rise of
10:06the Nazi party and the threat from Europe seemed to gather pace.
10:09There was a lot of energy put into the planning to evacuate vulnerable people, mainly children,
10:16but also expectant mothers and people who were infirm in some way, to leave the cities
10:22which were most under threat.
10:25The first evacuation, at the start of September 1939, was voluntary.
10:30Children were taken to 168 stations in central London and the suburbs.
10:361,577 trains left London between the 1st and 4th of September 1939.
10:45And there is a mass exodus of children from Britain's cities.
10:50In three days, 1.5 million people are moved out to safe areas, primarily on the railways,
10:58but they're doing this voluntarily, they don't have to.
11:02Gordon Abbott was part of the second wave,
11:05who left London in June 1940 as the bombing intensified.
11:09Most of us were looking out of the window, not knowing where we were going,
11:13or who we were going to live with, and the destination where we were going.
11:18So it was quite, I felt it was quite exciting.
11:21Other children, of course, at that time were crying, upset.
11:25Certainly the girls, I think they obviously missed their mum and dads more than we did.
11:29Boys, of course, were more of the fact is that we don't cry, we are strong enough characters,
11:34we don't cry, we don't cry.
11:36Evacuation depended on Britain's railway network.
11:39It was absolutely essential to the movement of millions of children across the country,
11:45and that continued throughout the war.
11:47The railways were continually utilised by people fleeing from this threat of aerial bombing
11:54in their cities out to countryside areas.
11:57The railways are the means by which people are able to get to their homes,
12:02out to countryside areas.
12:04The railways are the means by which people can escape, really, for their lives.
12:10I thought, from my point of view, that it was going to be a great adventure.
12:20The journey was very long.
12:22When the train stopped, which was obviously the steam engine,
12:26when it stopped either to fill up with water for the boilers or coal,
12:32we as boys, of course, wanted to go to the loo.
12:35So what we decided, without any embarrassment to anyone else,
12:38we just opened the door and peed out the door.
12:43The experience of evacuation was really quite varied.
12:47For some children, it was incredibly well organised.
12:49There were attempts to keep, for example, classes together.
12:53There were attempts to keep families, brothers and sisters together.
12:57But despite these attempts to begin with,
12:59children might find that actually it became chaotic
13:02the further down the line that they got.
13:04When they got to the other end, families and classmates
13:07might be broken up to go and stay in different areas.
13:11After a full day's journey, Gordon and his classmates
13:15arrived at Bewd in North Cornwall.
13:18They were then taken from the station to a church hall.
13:21We were put in one corner in a group with our little belongings that we had,
13:27our gas masks and a few things that we had.
13:30And then the local people just selected us at random.
13:33So if a person wanted to have a little boy or a girl,
13:37then they would just take out who they really wanted.
13:40For evacuated children, they really, many of them,
13:44are entering a whole new world when they arrive in these rural areas.
13:49Many of them have never left the city before.
13:51This is an alien landscape in so many ways.
13:54There are fields, there are animals,
13:57there are villages and they've come from cities overcrowding
14:01and suddenly there's space.
14:04It was a culture shock because obviously I'd never been into the country
14:09as rural as I've been evacuated to.
14:12Open fields, livestock.
14:14At that time, of course, they were hay harvesting.
14:16So there were wagons of carts of hay in the fields
14:20and people were harvesting.
14:21So it was a really a cultural shock, but I adapted very quickly to it.
14:27Gordon was very fortunate.
14:29He was taken in by a Mr and Mrs Newton and worked on their farm.
14:34He was treated as one of the family and happily called them Aunty and Uncle.
14:40Gordon only saw his parents once in five years.
14:44The time I had to leave in 1945, of course, was very upsetting.
14:48I remember Aunty and Uncle coming with me at that time.
14:52They had a little Austin 7 and they drove me to Bune railway station.
14:58And I remember boarding the train.
15:02And Uncle and Aunty was with me.
15:05And that was the first time that I'd seen Uncle crying.
15:10Aunty was crying.
15:12I boarded the train with a suitcase of belongings, leaning out the window.
15:18They were crying.
15:19I was crying.
15:20I was obviously, I'd probably wave goodbye as a steam train pulled out and said goodbye.
15:25And I was, that was the only time I didn't cry when I left London.
15:29But when I left them, because I was so part of their family
15:34and with their kindness and love they showed towards me.
15:38It wasn't until later years that you realise how deeply infectioned that they had for me.
15:44And I obviously do still now.
15:46So it was very upsetting.
15:48Far worse than what, in fact, I left London with from my parents.
15:52The evacuation from British cities had been carefully planned for many years.
15:57But in May 1940, the railway network was given only a few hours notice
16:03to help turn a catastrophe into a miracle.
16:09In the Second World War, Britain's railways proved they were capable
16:12of transporting hundreds of thousands of children in an operation that was long planned.
16:17But in the spring of 1940, the railways faced an unexpected and unique evacuation.
16:25The German army was advancing through northern France,
16:28pushing the British and French ahead of them.
16:31Over 330,000 men were trapped on the coast at a place few had ever heard of, Dunkirk.
16:40The evacuation of Dunkirk was a typical example where
16:43One of the reasons why all those troops ended up on those beaches
16:46and did not get wiped out by the Germans is that the Germans could not get there fast enough
16:51and the railways had been blown up behind them and so the logistics were against them.
16:55So that's why they were sitting there waiting to be rescued.
16:59At 5pm on the 27th of May, the Railway Executive Committee
17:03was given the code word Operation Dynamo.
17:06And in the early hours of the next morning,
17:08scores of trains were heading for the Channel ports.
17:12The railways had virtually no notice that Dunkirk was going to happen.
17:16They were just simply told the night before.
17:18So they just set off with no timetable, the drivers got in their cabs.
17:23They were set off down the line to Dover.
17:25They would look up at the signal box and say,
17:27where am I going, mates? And he'd say, you're going to Dunkirk.
17:30And they'd say, well, we're going to Dunkirk.
17:32And they'd say, well, we're going to Dunkirk.
17:33And they'd look up at the signal box and say, where am I going, mates?
17:37And he'd say, you're going down that line.
17:48David Porter was a schoolboy in South London during the war.
17:53This local line usually carried electric trains.
17:58Walking here one day in late May 1940, he spotted something unusual.
18:04Long trains, one after another, were coming through,
18:08with the soldiers hanging out of the windows and waving.
18:11This gave us an idea that something different was happening.
18:15They mainly appeared to be Tommies, and some of them would call out,
18:20get us a cup of tea.
18:26We think of Dunkirk as the story of a brave flotilla of little boats
18:30that crossed the Channel to bring our weary troops home
18:32after the setbacks of 1940.
18:34But it's also a story of the railways as well.
18:38600 trains had to be marshaled to bring back 300,000 troops
18:43in the space of four days,
18:45bringing them back home to rest and to recovery in hospital.
18:49Without the railways, Dunkirk could never have happened.
18:53The Dunkirk evacuation was so well organised
18:57that at stations all along the line from Dover,
18:59volunteers were on hand to help the soldiers.
19:02There would be cups of tea on the platform,
19:05men would be taken off the trains and they would be shaved,
19:08their wounds would be dressed,
19:09and they even had a production line of washing socks.
19:13They would take the socks off at one station, wash them,
19:16and when the next train came by,
19:17they'd put the socks back on the men again.
19:19So it was a wonderful sense of warm-hearted generosity by local people.
19:25At Wandsworth Road, further down the line,
19:29that's where the person who was to become my wife in later years
19:33was leaning over the barrier and passing tea to the same soldiers
19:39that I had seen here and were asking for cups of tea.
19:44Money was even collected on station platforms for the soldiers.
19:48A British Army captain named Anthony Rhodes
19:51found himself on a commuter train bound for Waterloo.
19:54He recalled later...
20:18Churchill knew that Dunkirk had been a disaster.
20:21Over a million men had been captured in France.
20:25But the evacuation boats and trains
20:27allowed the British Army to fight another day.
20:34Scarcity of raw materials in the Second World War,
20:37such as iron and steel,
20:39meant that both the Germans and the Allies
20:41had to radically change the way they built their locomotives.
20:45The Germans came up with the Kriegsloch,
20:48which had a thinner frame
20:50so that the spare steel could be used to armour plate ships and tanks.
20:56In the National Railway Museum in York is Britain's answer.
21:00The 060 Q1-class Austerity locomotive.
21:05The strongest steam engine ever to run on Britain's railways.
21:09Like the Kriegsloch, it too was stripped back.
21:13Style was sacrificed for functionality.
21:16It looks quite odd
21:18because, of course, it doesn't have this running plate down the side,
21:21which you expect on steam locomotives.
21:24And actually, it was designed down to a price.
21:27They saved so much steel in the building of 40 of these locomotives
21:31that they could have built another nine.
21:32And actually, this wheel arrangement is called an 060.
21:36These were the most powerful 060s in the country.
21:39So they were able to really shift the goods when they were needed.
21:44If you think about freight trains in the war,
21:46the amount of freight being shifted by the railways goes up by something like 46%.
21:51And, of course, it's not a very fast locomotive.
21:53You can see that by the size of the wheels.
21:55You're not going to do a good speed with it,
21:57but nonetheless, it'll do what you need to do,
21:59which is move lots of heavy freight around
22:02and, if you need to, move troop trains around.
22:05The Austerity locomotive was strong, but also versatile.
22:09Versatile in a way that initially caused some scepticism.
22:13It's designed so you can go forwards and backwards
22:15so the tender is designed in a way you can look back down the line more easily.
22:20And, in fact, the drivers didn't quite believe that,
22:23so the designer himself sat on the tender
22:26and had it driven backwards down the line at 50 miles an hour
22:29to prove that was no problem.
22:33The wartime locomotives on both sides shared a characteristic.
22:38They were painted black.
22:40Wartime maintenance in those days, you didn't have elaborate liveries
22:44because, of course, they wanted to cut down on cleaning of machines.
22:48They had less people to work on the depots,
22:50whereas in the old days, the cleaning was the first step
22:54rung on the ladder to becoming a driver,
22:56so everybody started off cleaning engines.
22:58In these days, you had less cleaners.
23:00Some cases, you had gangs of women cleaners.
23:02So, basically, they went for black all over
23:05and, in fact, most locomotives in the wartime were painted black.
23:10No locomotive was spared the Austerity treatment.
23:14Even one of the most famous locomotives in the world, the Mallard.
23:19It's a symbol of that golden age of the railway that we nostalgia about,
23:23which is the interwar period and the streamlined era
23:27that ties in with Art Deco and all those nice design elements,
23:31but also, of course, it's the fastest steam locomotive in the world.
23:35So, it puts those things together in a very attractive way,
23:39so that's why it's famous worldwide to this day.
23:43In 1942, the Mallard went into the paint shop in Doncaster
23:47and was transformed.
24:04Probably, those people working in Doncaster
24:07would have been a bit sad to see it come out in black,
24:10and that's proven really post-war.
24:12As soon as they can, they get it back into blue.
24:20Within weeks of the start of the Second World War,
24:24Britain's railway crews had evacuated both troops and children
24:28with great success,
24:30but their job soon got a great deal more dangerous.
24:40At the start of the Second World War,
24:43Britain's railway network had coped well
24:46with the mass evacuation of troops from Dunkirk.
24:49It had also helped move city children
24:52away from the threat of large-scale German bombing raids.
24:56In early September 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain,
25:00that threat became a reality.
25:03The Luftwaffe switched targets from RAF airfields
25:06to the nation's capital.
25:08The aim was to throw London, in Churchill's words,
25:11into confusion and paralysis.
25:14The railways were particularly vulnerable
25:16in the months of bombing that followed.
25:19During the war, the railways were the lifeline of the nation.
25:22They kept Britain going.
25:24The railways were the home front.
25:25Everything about Britain at that time,
25:27with petrol rationed, with merchant shipping crippled,
25:30the railways had to do everything.
25:32They moved the people, they moved the bombs,
25:34they moved the tanks, they moved the trains.
25:36They kept the nation going.
25:37It needed an extraordinary breed of people
25:40to put up with that day after day after day,
25:43and those people were the railway staff.
25:45Not just men, but women too,
25:47because as some of the men went off to war,
25:49women came to fill other jobs and did it brilliantly.
25:53There was one day when the railway network in London
25:56was particularly badly hit.
26:00Let's think back to that terrible night of 11th May 1941,
26:04when the German bombers came sweeping up the Thames,
26:07determined to put out the communications of London.
26:10Over there, Waterloo was hit by a huge number of incendiary bombs.
26:16Down in the city, Cannon Street was gutted.
26:18Hobe and Viaduct was destroyed.
26:22Over on the northern skyline there, past the post office tower,
26:25the bombs were raining down
26:27on the historic King's Cross and St Pancras station.
26:30Everywhere on the horizon,
26:31there would have been flames lighting up the sky with orange.
26:36For the railway staff, their days were dangerous, unpredictable and long.
26:41They had to book on duty every morning and keep those trains going
26:44as the bombs fell around them,
26:46as all the uncertainties of wartime affected the services.
26:50There were trains that fell into craters, absolutely true.
26:53In the blackout, a bomb would have exploded,
26:57In the blackout, a bomb would fall ahead of the train,
27:01and they would fall into the craters.
27:02There were stories of drivers who saw their own houses being bombed
27:06as they were driving past and kept going.
27:09The engineers who repaired the stations,
27:11everybody had to keep going all the time.
27:14They dealt with the fact that there were open targets for bombing raids
27:18because the glow from the firebox meant at night
27:22you could very much see a steam engine going along
27:24and steam engines were chased and bombed, trains were bombed.
27:27Even the Flying Scotsman was strafed by wartime Yonkers
27:30coming over the North Sea.
27:35In an attempt to make the locomotive cabs less visible from the air,
27:39many, like the one on this GWR Standard Class locomotive,
27:43were partly sealed in.
27:46But it was impossible to completely protect railway staff from danger.
27:51One of the most extraordinary acts of bravery
27:53was by a man called Norman Tunner.
27:55He was a shunter in the Birkenhead docks on Merseyside.
27:59He was one of the men who uncoupled the trucks
28:01and coupled them up again in the marshalling yards.
28:03He saw an incendiary bomb fall onto another train
28:06that was packed with high-explosive bombs.
28:09He didn't think twice.
28:10He got his shunter's hook and he hooked the bomb out,
28:13grabbed it with his hands and threw it away
28:15from where it could cause any damage.
28:17It was an extraordinary act.
28:19He was a man who wasn't trained in the military,
28:21he wasn't a fighting man, but he was a hero in his own way.
28:24And it's typical of the selfless things that were done
28:27on the part of the railway staff.
28:29He got the George Cross,
28:30which is one of the highest honours that anybody can get,
28:32and he deserved it in every respect.
28:38But a frightful measure of cruelty has been inflicted
28:41upon the great cities and seaports of the country,
28:44I say here that we honour them for their constancy
28:50in a comradeship of suffering, of endurance and of triumph.
29:03At the start of the London Blitz,
29:05people soon realised that underground stations
29:08were a safe place to shelter.
29:10The authorities didn't like it initially
29:12and they tried to deter people from doing it,
29:14but every time they heard a bomb or heard a siren,
29:18they would head for the tube station.
29:19So in the end, the authorities rolled over and gave in
29:22and we've seen all those pictures, haven't we,
29:24of people sheltering down the tubes.
29:26They would take armchairs, they would take books
29:29and whole communities went to live down in the tube stations.
29:34Apart from one or two incidents, it was pretty safe,
29:36but it wasn't that nice.
29:38Sometimes we get the propaganda image
29:40of jolly cockneys all getting together,
29:43singing songs in the underground
29:45and having a sort of jolly time.
29:46It wasn't actually like that.
29:48It was dirty, it was dusty, it was uncomfortable,
29:52it smelled awful and lots of people
29:55were not actually very nice to other people.
29:58In the early days, people would come and get a picture
30:00on the platform and then when the later arrivals came,
30:03they would sell it for an inflated price.
30:06So it wasn't all camaraderie and let's all get along together.
30:11Sometimes, platforms became so crowded
30:15that when a train came in, it had to be stopped in a tunnel
30:18while tube staff pushed in the feet and arms
30:21of sleeping people overhanging the line.
30:36Elsewhere in London, there was another underground world
30:40that also proved to be essential during the Second World War.
30:47Ever since the railways began in Britain,
30:49they've been used by the post office
30:51to carry letters and parcels.
30:54The network was perfect for transporting items
30:57long distances between cities.
31:00But by the turn of the 20th century,
31:03it was clear that a solution was needed
31:05to get the mail across an increasingly crowded capital.
31:08The idea stemmed out of a report published in 1911
31:11that looked at solutions around the congested streets of London
31:14and finding ways of moving the mail, avoiding that congestion.
31:18But of course, the railway stations in London
31:21aren't necessarily where the sorting offices are in London.
31:27So the world's first dedicated mail railway was proposed.
31:32To avoid the busy streets, it was to go underground.
31:36Construction began 1912, 1913 on the railway,
31:41but the First World War led to a delay in the construction.
31:45By that point, they'd built the entire tunnel network,
31:48so the actual tunnels were all complete.
31:50What hadn't happened was hadn't laid any of the tracks.
31:55With London under threat from German bombing,
31:58and before any mail had even been carried,
32:00the railway was called upon to provide vital protection
32:04for some priceless national treasures.
32:07They decided to use the tunnel network to store important works of art
32:12to protect them from the bombings that were happening above ground,
32:15so the Zeppelin raids.
32:16Paintings from things like the National Portrait Gallery's collection,
32:19the Royal Academy's collection, were stored down in the tunnels
32:22for safekeeping during these raids
32:24and only removed after the end of the First World War.
32:28Construction wasn't then continued until 1924,
32:30when work once more began.
32:35The result was a 6.5-mile tunnel network
32:38with a total of 22 miles of track.
32:42So, Mail Rail runs from Whitechapel in the east
32:45to Paddington in the west,
32:47so it links together Liverpool Street Station with Paddington Station,
32:50but taking in district offices on the way.
32:54It was the first driverless underground electric railway anywhere in the world.
32:5990 new locomotives were ordered to carry letters and parcels across London
33:04swiftly and securely.
33:10But a handful of special locomotives were designed
33:13to be independently operated by a driver.
33:16One of these is still in use.
33:21This is our battery loco.
33:23It's one of three built in 1926 for the Post Office Railway.
33:27This is an original and it still runs today.
33:30It's very important to us, so it's done well for 90 years.
33:34It's got 152 lead-acid cells that will generate 300 volts.
33:38It weighs 7.5 tonnes and it was designed originally
33:41to retrieve broken-down trains from the tunnel.
33:45It doesn't have a lot of mod cons.
33:48The suspension is four springs, one on each corner,
33:51so you feel every lump and bump in the track.
33:54You're very much in contact with the track as you're travelling along.
34:00It's a privilege to drive this because it's a piece of history.
34:04At the peak, you'd have had something like 18 trains in operation
34:08on the line at any one time.
34:09If you stood here at Mount Pleasant, you would have had a train
34:12coming on average every six minutes during the peak time of operation.
34:17You would have probably had something like 200 bags of mail
34:20carried on a single train.
34:22We're talking about millions upon millions of items of mail
34:25would have been carried just every year on the railway.
34:27During the Second World War,
34:29London found itself under almost constant aerial bombardment.
34:34Wartime communication is extremely important
34:37and the damage to the streets above would have meant
34:39moving mail across the capital would have been difficult and treacherous.
34:44The Post Office Railway was not immune.
34:47When there was, in some cases, a train coming on the railway,
34:50it would have been very difficult to get a hold of it.
34:52It would have been very difficult to get a hold of it.
34:56When there was, in some cases, damage caused to buildings here
35:00at Mount Pleasant, when a bomb went down a lift shaft and caused damage,
35:04on the whole, the whole railway continued to operate as normal
35:08during the Second World War, which was obviously a very valuable resource.
35:13It was also used as temporary sheltering for Post Office staff.
35:18During the Second World War, it would have carried all manner of letters,
35:21letters for soldiers, letters to and from the war front.
35:24So letters would have come in, a lot of them would have come in to London
35:27during the Second World War and so it very much had a role
35:29for troop mail during the war.
35:32Written communication was so, so important.
35:35The want to be able to write to and communicate with loved ones
35:38at a distance away.
35:39And during the First and the Second World War,
35:41postal communication was still the principal means of doing that.
35:46The Mail Rail Network carried its last precious consignment in 2003.
35:52But a new museum is planned, which will bring these tunnels back to life.
35:58The story the Postal Museum tells is one of communication,
36:01one of design history.
36:02It was an opportunity for people to really understand
36:05what the Mail Rail was and how it worked.
36:07It's a fully immersive experience that allows people to get on board a train
36:10and to journey on part of the railway.
36:15By June 1944, London's Mail Rail had carried letters from evacuee children.
36:21News of defeat in France and victory in the North African desert.
36:26Soon, it would be carrying news of an invasion,
36:29the biggest amphibious invasion the world had ever known.
36:34And railways would be key to its success.
36:44By the spring of 1944,
36:46the whole of occupied Europe was eagerly awaiting D-Day.
36:50The Allied invasion of Europe.
36:53Hundreds of thousands of British, French, American and Canadian troops
36:58had assembled around south coast ports.
37:03A small village station was a key part of that D-Day story.
37:08World leaders walked its track and platforms.
37:12Droxford in Hampshire by the 1940s was already past its prime.
37:17The line itself was built as a mainline alternative from London to Portsmouth
37:24and never actually realised its potential
37:28and subsequently became a branch line.
37:31The station itself had very long platforms to take mainline trains.
37:36At this point, it was two tracks with a number of sidings
37:40and a goods yard at the back where they stored coal and other things.
37:44I think the station master must have had quite a lot of time
37:47on his hands in between the trains.
37:51Then on June the 2nd, Winston Churchill's personal train
37:56pulled into a siding at Droxford.
37:59The station was close to the headquarters of General Eisenhower,
38:02the Allied forces' supreme commander.
38:05It was also selected for another strategic reason.
38:09Droxford was chosen for this train visit
38:12because it was a relatively discreet location
38:16but well connected to the main lines,
38:18but particularly because this siding is in a deep cutting
38:22and it was considered safe and secure from potential bombing raids.
38:27Churchill loved the railways.
38:29He saw the railways as an essential part of his strategy to win the war.
38:33And of course, he had his own train as well,
38:35where he travelled around the country.
38:37He used the train as his kind of centre of operations
38:40and everywhere he went, the railway staff loved him for it
38:43because they knew that he believed in the railways
38:46and he believed in them.
38:48Now, his train was very splendidly equipped.
38:51He had a staff, he had sleeping quarters,
38:54he had his own personal butler,
38:56he had his own stewards to serve him in the dining car.
39:01Within an hour of Churchill's arrival,
39:04almost everyone in Droxford guessed who their secret visitor was.
39:08They all knew somebody important had come to stay in the station
39:12because the train was recognisable,
39:14there is a bridge over the siding
39:17from where people could see something was going on.
39:21The Home Guard were asked to guard some of the crossroads and bridges.
39:27After Churchill spent the night here,
39:29Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden arrived in the morning
39:32with his Principal Private Secretary,
39:34who said later the Prime Minister was...
39:37Eden wasn't impressed with the train.
39:40He thought it was impossible to do any work on the train
39:43and he commented that Churchill always seemed to be in his bath
39:48and General Ismay, his aide-de-camp, was always on the telephone
39:53and there was only one telephone.
39:56After lunchtime on 3rd June,
39:58Churchill was driven from the siding at Droxford to the port of Edinburgh.
40:03Churchill was driven from the siding at Droxford to the port of Southampton
40:07so the Prime Minister could watch the troops embark for D-Day.
40:11However, that evening on his train,
40:14Churchill received a call from General Eisenhower
40:16who told him that because of poor weather,
40:19D-Day was postponed for at least 24 hours.
40:22But there was more history to be made at Droxford station.
40:26At lunchtime on 4th June,
40:28General de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French,
40:31arrived to be briefed about D-Day.
40:34De Gaulle flew into Northolt and was driven down to Droxford
40:39and met Anthony Eden at Droxford station
40:43where they walked together along the track to meet Churchill on his train.
40:48De Gaulle must have felt quite poignant
40:51because the symbolism of a railway carriage would not have been lost on him.
40:57The French took the surrender of the Germans
41:01in the First World War in a railway carriage
41:04and the Germans insisted on the French signing their surrender
41:09in the same railway carriage at the start of the Second World War.
41:14Droxford wasn't the only station to be transformed
41:17in the run-up to the invasion of Europe.
41:19You find that little village stations
41:22suddenly find themselves with extended platforms,
41:26little known bits of the rail network
41:29that probably should have been closed down
41:32suddenly end up with 30 or 40 trains thundering through,
41:36not usually very fast, but certainly going through
41:39and being very important for the build-up of troops and supplies in Britain.
41:46By its nature, D-Day was conducted in secret.
41:49The railways contributed a huge amount to this.
41:52All across southern England, secret marshalling yards
41:56were set up well away from prying eyes.
41:58Miles and miles of sidings were laid in preparation
42:01to take all this hardware up to the ports.
42:05It was a brilliant logistical operation.
42:09On the evening of the 4th of June,
42:11Churchill left Droxford station and returned to London.
42:15The weather improved and two days later,
42:18the invasion of Europe was successfully launched.
42:21Britain's railways were key in that success.
42:25The network and its staff had proved themselves throughout the conflict.
42:29Railways played a much more important role in the Second World War
42:34than maybe had been expected, and many historians miss this point.
42:38They seem to think that the important aspect of logistics
42:43in the Second World War was trucks and cars,
42:46when actually any detailed examination of logistic history
42:51in the Second World War will show that railways were again crucial.