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5 Precious Cargo

Four railway journeys that changed modern history: 24 year-old Winston Churchill boarded an armoured train during the Boer War hoping for a newspaper scoop. He was captured, but became world famous after escaping. In 1917 Lenin crossed Europe in a sealed train, aided by the Germans who hoped that he would drag Russia out of the war. The infamous Hungarian Gold Train that contained plundered Jewish jewellery and gold was an exercise in naked greed at the end of the Second World War, whilst the Kindertransport saved almost 10,000 Jewish children from certain death. John Fieldsend and Dame Stephanie Shirley give a moving account of their journeys.

6 Secrets & Lies

The strategic importance of trains has resulted in many elaborate schemes and methods being devised to destroy them. Historian Neil Faulkner tells the story of Lawrence of Arabia and his pioneering guerrilla warfare against the railways of the Ottoman Empire. We track down a train used by the SOE in the Second World War to teach their agents how to de-rail locomotives. Under New York's Grand Central Terminal are two railway secrets: rusting in a siding is President Roosevelt's personal train that brought him secretly into the city, and a generator called M42 that its claimed Nazi spies tried to destroy in the Second World War.