For over a century, locomotives played a vital role in wartime, transporting soldiers and supplies to the front lines, serving as mobile hospitals, and even acting as a massive weapon on wheels. Explore trains and railways that changed history.
EPISODE 1
The Death Railway
The Thai-Burma Railway, built to supply Japan’s invasion of India, cut through mountains and jungles and required over 600 bridges, including the legendary bridge over the River Kwai. But it cost the lives of thousands of Allied POWs who built it.
EPISODE 2
Ambulance Trains
During the 19th century and World War I, trains transported soldiers to the front lines and picked up the wounded on the return trip. See how these rolling ambulances helped doctors and nurses provide care while rolling in and out of war zones.
EPISODE 3
Nazi Railways
During World War II, the German locomotive industry was used to create a fully functioning fuhrer headquarters on wheels and a deadly mobile cannon. Learn how an entire railway network was used to carry out mass murder in the Holocaust.
EPISODE 4
WWI
A look into how the efficiency of the rail networks on both sides helped cause the stalemate of the First World War.
EPISODE 5
WWII The Home Front
Eyewitness accounts of how trains were able to bring back troops from Dunkirk, and evacuate hundreds of children to safety during World War II.
EPISODE 6
Precious Cargo
Discover the stories of four railway journeys that changed modern history, involving Churchill, Lenin, Hungarian gold stolen by Nazis, and the Kindertransport, which saved approximately 10,000 Jewish children from certain death.
Mark Felton
Daniel Knight
Lisa Ronaghan
Nikola Trifunovic
Michael Wenn Williams
Jonathan Mayo
Jenni Day
Kate Beal
