locomotion: Dan Snow's history of Railways.

[S.A.C Martin]

Seen all three episodes now (watched the third on iPlayer on my lunch break). Hugely disappointing. I take the point that these programs are intended for the general public, which is a good thing assuredly, but unfortunately Dan Snow misses the point in every episode, making very broad, vague assumptions about railways that I would argue most railway historians would find wildly inaccurate. 

 

For example, safety on the railways. No doubt, it took a great amount of lives from many varied and destructive accidents to bring in proper braking systems, signalling and similar, but there's no mention that railways took their own initiative in many ways, with very many varied signalling methods, for example, in existence until a more standardised affair of block signalling was introduced. 

 

Much of the third program moved abroad, certainly an important part of the overall story of the railways, but having set up the series as a history of the railways in Britain, you could be forgiven for wondering what exactly the relevance of the long Argentinian section was. Export - yep, fine, got it, imports from abroad too, yep, fine, got it, but in the overall context of this third episode, was it really relevant?

 

Trying to cram in nigh on 130 years of railway history into the third program was too much. It was vague, broadly (and sometimes bordering on incorrectly) defined, and there was so much more nonsense with certain bits of films not really fitting the piece he was talking about (did we really need him standing on top of a train at the beginning? What purpose did that serve? Was it actually that good really?) that it felt even more disjointed and confusing than the last one.

 

Overall view of the series is that it doesn't really serve the population it's purportedly aimed at, mainly due to some bizarre directing, poor editing, and very, very broad and general accounts of railway history that haven't been researched in depth enough to really convey their true significance.

 

I stand by my assertion that there are better ways of getting railway history over to the general public, and that this isn't it. The recent Welsh documentaries and Michael Portillo's series again leading the way at present on the Beeb. Dan Snow's series is a poor effort indeed.