Michael travels through Britain and northern Europe uncovering railway stories from the Great War. He begins his quest in the French city of Metz on European tracks built with war in mind, charts the birth of the railway war at a small station in Luxembourg and discovers how Britain's railways coped with the challenge of sending thousands of troops to join the conflict from Southampton. Finally, he returns to France to learn how the early war of movement gave way to the stalemate of the trenches.

Michael travels through Britain and northern France uncovering railway stories from the Great War. He gets hands-on experience of the miniature tracks and trains that kept supplies flowing to the front line and visits North Eastern Railway Headquarters in York to find out about the Great War's forgotten railway leader. He hears the story of the Bath railway poet, and pays homage at the site of Britain's deadliest train crash in Quintinshill. Finally, Michael crosses the Channel to discover how the railways fed millions of men in the trenches from a depot in Abancourt.