Michael Portillo's great train journey into Britain's nooks and crannies - with a timetable from 1839 as my companion

By MICHAEL PORTILLO FOR MAILONLINE
Updated: 06:31 EDT, 27 December 2009

It was one of the most agonising decisions that I had to take. So much emotion had built up around the issue.

People’s jobs were at stake and, more than that, a way of life. There were considerations of history and heritage to weigh against the pounds and pence, or rather millions of pounds.

Then there was the small matter of persuading Margaret Thatcher.

As I think back on it, two decades later, the moment I took up my pen and signed the reprieve is one of the happiest days of my political career. The Settle to Carlisle railway line was saved.

Emotional journey: Michael Portillo with his Bradshaw guide

Its 72 miles of track were built in the 1870s through some of Britain’s wildest country, up steep gradients, across broad valleys and through long tunnels. The cost of construction in terms of human life was enormous.

But by the Eighties, the line was largely unused. Its towering viaducts were crumbling and in need of expensive repair. British Rail asked the Minister for Transport for permission to close it, and in 1989 that meant me.

Those were days when economics were supposed to rule, and even nationalised industries had to justify every cost. But I knew that the Prime Minister cared about heritage as well as balance sheets.

Better still, an enormous campaign had caused the numbers of passengers using the line to boom. I saw the way to stay the axe.

Exactly 20 years later on a beautiful day, I am steaming across the 24 arches of the Ribblehead viaduct. The valleys are full of people waving. 

The Ribblehead viaduct: part of the line that Michael Portillo helped to save

They have come out today to see and to photograph the Fellsman locomotive and the set of vintage carriages that she pulls through the glorious landscape. I have the window pulled down and I am leaning out, filling my face with soot and smoke.

My eyes are damp with emotion. Saving the Settle to Carlisle is the best thing I did in politics.

Riding that line was a detour in a series of long railway journeys across Britain I took in the footsteps of the brilliant Victorian George Bradshaw.

He created the world’s first book of railway timetables in 1839, making sense of the services offered by Britain’s 150 competing rail companies.

His yellow bound guides were so common that to Victorians and Edwardians any timetable was known as ‘a Bradshaw’.

Later he produced guidebooks, and I used one to discover a country I thought long lost: a Britain of knitted guernseys, liquorice and saddleries, Eccles cakes and hat-makers, of oyster farms and long-john factories.

Having used trains as a tool of my political trade, to give a speech and leave, I felt rather ashamed to be so ignorant of my homeland.

For seven summers in a row we took our family holiday at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight

Yes, I had often been to great cities like Manchester, Bristol and York, but I could hardly claim to have explored them. And as for Todmorden, Filey and St Ives, they were complete unknowns.

Now I was travelling with a purpose, savouring the journey and the scenery, looking forward to the destination. I rediscovered my childhood pleasure in travelling by train. 

Growing up in Stanmore, North London, a special treat had been to board the Belmont Rattler, a tank engine (like Thomas) that would pant down the line towards Harrow.

For seven summers in a row we took our family holiday at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, and one of its outstanding attractions was the steam train that carried us there from the ferry at Ryde. Some 50 years later the memory of both is still vivid in my mind.

But neither was as awe-inspiring as the epic journey from London to Scotland when my mother Cora would take my three brothers and me on what was, laughably, called the Starlight Special.

That ran interminably through the night from King’s Cross to Kirkcaldy and carried us to see our grandparents. Despite the discomfort of sitting up all night
in second class, morning brought the excitement of crossing the Forth bridge near Edinburgh.

My grandfather had watched it being built, and to this day railwaymen refer to it reverentially as ‘The Bridge’, as though there were no other.

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Forth Railway Bridge: Mr Portillo's grandfather had watched it being built, and to this day railwaymen refer to it reverentially as ¿The Bridge¿

On my recent railway journeys I crossed that massive structure again. Indeed, because it is presently clad in scaffolding, I had the chance to stand 367ft above the Firth of Forth at the bridge’s summit.

It was, like the Settle to Carlisle trip, an emotional leg of my journey. At the end of 40 days of rail travel, these two experiences remain highlights.

My grandfather owned a linen factory and had a beautiful home. Standing outside it for only the second time since he died in 1962, a lady who works in it (the house is now an old folk’s home) took me by surprise by saying: ‘I like to imagine you as a five-year-old sliding down the banisters.’

To my pleasure, the stately oak staircase is intact. But I would never have been allowed to slide on it.

For decades now whenever I can, I have automatically plumped for going abroad by plane. But now, with the queues for security searches at airports and the squash of small airliner seats, plane travel is less appealing.

Journeying day after day by train, I was agreeably surprised that most services were on time. I liked the pace of edging across the map rather than zooming between time zones.

St Stephen's Tower at the Palace of Westminster: A great Victorian achievement

I learned that Britain’s nooks and crannies are very worth exploring. I not only rediscovered railways but shifted away from my London-centric view of our country. Britain now (as ever) is full of people who are friendly, funny and enterprising.

Many still carry on the trades and enterprises listed in Bradshaw’s guide 150 years ago. We are still very much shaped by our Victorian ancestors. (I also learned that in Torquay there’s a drunk who thinks I’m Jeremy Paxman, and in Bristol a Big Issue seller who believes I’m Michael Heseltine. I am adding them to the man who mistook me for Peter Mandelson and a fellow who thought I was Chris Patten.)

By making a series of television programmes about my travels with Bradshaw, I hope I have created a snapshot of Britain today. Even our diversity has its origins in the Victorians’ achievements of Empire and global trade.

Those Victorians are derided today for being as strait-laced, bombastic and imperialistic. But they were serious about knowledge, discovery
and application.

Those qualities enabled them to be great achievers and inventors. They made huge scientific advances, and accomplished extraordinary feats of architecture and engineering.

Bradshaw epitomised that Victorian zeal and by the end of my travels I found it hard to put the book down. It is truthful and opinionated, often funny but never predictable. Bradshaw proved the finest travelling companion.

I began my journey on a personal note in Liverpool where, in 1975, my first job was with the Ocean shipping company. Then, in the Eighties, I
was Minister for Liverpool, trying to secure investment after the infamous Toxteth riots.

You’d think then that I’d know it intimately but my exploration of its railway history unearthed some new aspects. For example, Bradshaw marvels at the engineering skills that created the tunnel between Edge Hill Station and the Lime Street terminus.

And today, if you have a date with a girl and your romantic ambitions remain unfulfilled, you can still call it ‘Getting off at Edge Hill!’ A month and a half later I also ended on a personal note: in London, at Westminster.

I returned to the Houses of Parliament where I climbed the 343 steps of the Big Ben clock tower. The clock and its chimes have fascinated me since childhood.

When I was an MP I had an office just beneath and I used to clamber out on to a roof to view its beautiful restoration. But I had been to the very top only once before, during
my last days as a Member when I thought it was something I had to do before leaving Parliament.

Here again is a strong connection with railways. The advent of fast east-west travel made it unsustainable for each town to have its own time zone, according to when the sun rose and set. Plymouth and London, whose sunsets are 16 minutes apart, had to be brought into alignment.

That required, for the first time, a really accurate national clock. The precise adjustment necessary to keep it within an accuracy of two seconds per day is achieved now, as ever, by adding or subtracting Victorian pennies from the 15ft long pendulum.

An extra coin raises its centre of gravity by a tiny amount, equivalent to shortening it, and speeds up the clock.

Yet again I see that so much of what we take for granted has come down the tracks to us from the advent of railways and the progress and modernity of the Bradshaw era.

The Palace of Westminster is symbolic of the Victorians’ triumphs. They were masters of the world, and they had reached that point through hard work, dedication to learning and because they had invented properly functioning political systems.

Elected parliaments and mayors, free speech and free trade provided the ecology for invention and enterprise.

Of course, their successes gave them a spectacular sense of their own superiority and Bradshaw’s guide reflects that arrogance.

On my journey I often scoffed at it. But when I reached the metaphorical end of the line and looked down from the clock on to the magnificent Palace of Westminster, I reflected that, without 19th Century giants such as Robert Stephenson, Charles Darwin and, yes, George Bradshaw, Britain would not be what it is now.

Indeed, as I have gone around Britain, it strikes me that the things that people do best today are characterised by serious effort and passion, qualities that were present in abundance in their generation. I now realise the best is only a cheap-day return away.

Great British Railway Journeys begins on January 4 on BBC2 at 6.30pm.