Steam power and steam railways helped transform 19th century Britain into the world's first industrial nation. In this first episode, Dan explores the earliest steam railways and their links to the burgeoning Lancashire cotton industry, discovering how railway pioneers George and Robert Stephenson created the first regular rail service from Manchester to Liverpool in 1830. Travelling down 200 year-old tunnels deep under the Pennines, Dan learns how scores of construction workers risked life and limb to construct the extraordinary networks of tracks, viaducts, bridges and tunnels that developed into the modern rail network. And he reveals how the early railway magnates won and lost fortunes in the investment bonanza that became known as Railway Mania and which created Britain's modern rail network.
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