A hundred years ago, the Great War killed an estimated 16 million people.
In this 90-minute special, Chris Tarrant crosses Europe to tell the story of the machine that lead to death on such an horrendous scale. It was not the machine gun, the first warplanes or tanks or even mustard gas, but the railway.
Travelling across Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, visiting training camps, stations, trenches, battlefields and cemeteries, Chris will find out how the railways that promised a quick decisive war in fact delivered millions to be slaughtered in the stalemate of the Western Front.
He’ll explore railways that were used to try to break the deadlock and railways that took the wounded and captured away from the front.
He’ll hear the words and even the voices of the people who travelled on them as he discovers why the First World War truly was the Railway War.
Chris’ journey starts in 1914 with the little-known story of the first military action on the Western Front: Germany’s capture of a small railway station in Luxembourg, in which the troops arrived the wrong day and were forced to apologise and leave again.
Setting the tone for both the importance of the railways and the catastrophic decision making of the whole war.
