大象传媒

Michael Portillo continues his rail journey exploring England鈥檚 north east coast. Heading north from Newcastle, Michael discovers one of the city鈥檚 trendiest hotspots, Ouseburn, and is intrigued to hear of its part in Newcastle鈥檚 early industrial development.

En route, Michael travels through the huge Northumberland coalfield. At Cramlington, he alights to visit an extraordinary work of landform art made from the spoil of a coalmine, the vast Northumberlandia, known as the Lady of the North.

Next stop is the former coal port of Blyth. On the historic quayside Michael enjoys a hearty sea shanty and learns about an intrepid former townsman, Captain William Smith, who in 1819 discovered the Antarctic. Michael meets a group of young people who have been inspired by the captain鈥檚 story to restore a Scottish Herring drifter, called a Zulu, with the Blyth Tall Ships Charity.

At Bedlington, Michael hunts down a lost railway, whose services began in 1850 but closed to passengers in 1964 following the Beeching Report. The 18-mile coastal Blyth and Tyne Railway is however rising from the ashes and test trains are already on the track.

Lynemouth Power Station once used coal to produce electricity but today has switched to biomass. Michael boards a half-kilometre long freight train loaded with wood pellets bound for the power station. He hears from the train driver and the fuel manager at Lynemouth how the decline of coal has affected their working lives and the region in which they live, and he learns how rail is playing its part in saving carbon.