Chris Tarrant reveals the best and most extreme railway journeys in the world
New series sees star travel to ten different countries from the Congo to India, Australia to Cuba and Japan in thrilling journey
I’VE been a fan of trains since I was a little squirt.
When I was about six, I was given a book called Great Railways of the World, and I loved reading how the railways were built.
Many of them were crafted by the British in the days when we were colonial and owned all the little pink bits on the map.
Thousands died in those early days, but these railways are lifelines to so many people across the world.
They are built up steep hills and through rocky expanses and snowy wildernesses in places such as Bolivia, Canada and Alaska.
The tracks survive avalanches, rock falls, monsoons and floods.
I just love the way they link communities together.
So the fact I am now on my third series of programmes about extreme railway journeys across the world is an absolute thrill for me.
In this series, we went to ten different countries from the Congo to India, Australia to Cuba and Japan, and discovered the stories behind the train journeys that exist in those places.
And what you realise is how much these trains mean to people.
In Bolivia, there was this bizarre train that went right over the top of the Andes, 15,000ft up, which is an amazing journey.
It is just like a request stop.
Little ladies would appear from behind a rock with those big, black bowler hats they all wear and bags over their shoulders full of everything from potatoes to chickens to babies.
They would put their hand out and the train would stop.
They’d go five miles then get off and disappear behind another rock.
Without the train, Bolivians in remote villages, inset, would be totally cut off.
There are no roads, they have no access to a plane or an airport and it’s too far to walk, so railways help farmers sell their crops and allow people to visit their families.
It was the same in India.
We went on a newly built railway and now people who have never been outside their own village can go to Delhi, Calcutta, and beyond.
The railways take a lot of maintenance.
We went on a terrific journey to the Rocky Mountains in North America where other forms of transport are very difficult.
They have a lot of avalanches where the snow covers the track, so what they have to do is go up in a helicopter and throw out dynamite bombs to clear the line.
I went up in the chopper and had to hold a massive stick of dynamite with a fuse.
It looked just like they do in the cartoons.
I was terrified. I threw the dynamite out onto this big bit of impacted snow, there was a bang, the helicopter shuddered, and suddenly we got completely whited out in a blizzard.
Related stories
You could not see a thing.
It was clear again within less than a minute, but I was genuinely frightened.
After all, I was still holding sticks of dynamite and I knew there were huge spiky mountains beneath us.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, we went to Japan where the bullet trains are unreal — they travel at more than 200mph.
They are spotlessly clean, pump a lovely lavender smell around the carriages and when we had a cup of coffee, it wasn’t even shaking.
Every single train I got on was exactly on time — to the second.
They really put our railway network to shame.
And our trains are incredibly expensive.
When we went to Azerbaijan, I paid just 30p for a 75-mile journey.
When I got back from my travels, I had to go to Manchester for a commercial and my train was 45 minutes late.
Then it sat outside Manchester for 45 minutes due to “over-running engineering works”.
And it cost me about £200.
If that happened in Japan, the driver would probably be hanged.
Some of the places we filmed were so wonderful.
I loved Buenos Aires so much, I went back with my wife three months later.
It has wide, tree-lined avenues, steaks the size of dustbin lids and the best red wine in the world.
It was fantastic, and then we got the train down to Patagonia which has to be one of the nicest places I’ve ever visited.
Azerbaijan was another great surprise.
It’s like Dubai — there is so much money there, which I didn’t expect at all.
The nation is right by the Caspian Sea and I think it will become a really big holiday destination.
And in Australia, we went from Adelaide — one of the nicest cities in the whole country — all the way up to Darwin, which is beautiful.
So far, we have travelled 168,212 miles to make this series, which is just under six times around the world.
And that’s one of the beauties of train journeys - you can cover so many miles in a relatively short space of time.
- Chris Tarrant’s Extreme Railway Journeys is out now (published by John Blake £20). Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways is shown on Channel 5 at 9pm on Mondays.