In the first episde, Chris begins in the cab of Puffing Billy, the world's oldest-surviving steam locomotive, which was built in 1813 and designed to move coal along a five-mile stretch of track from a Northumberland mine to the docks. Chris also tells the story of Henry Booth, who not only championed George Stephenson's famous Rocket, but also helped finance it, and talks about the work of the navvies who dug the tunnels and laid the tracks.

Chris Tarrant tells the story of how the engines that had made Britain finally ran out of steam, the devastating effect of the Beeching Report, how the railways were reinvented for the modern age, and how a sleek new locomotive not only saved the railway network, but reshaped the country.