Sir Michael Edward Palin is an English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2013 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.
Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo is a British journalist, broadcaster, and former Conservative Party politician. His broadcast series include railway documentaries such as Great British Railway Journeys and Great Continental Railway Journeys. A former member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Enfield Southgate from 1984 to 1997 and Kensington and Chelsea from 1999 to 2005.
Simon Alan Reeve is an English author, journalist, adventurer, documentary filmmaker and television presenter.
Donald Alan Whicker was a British journalist and television presenter and broadcaster. His career spanned almost 60 years, during which time he presented the documentary television programme Whicker's World for over 30 years. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005 for services to broadcasting.
Pole to Pole with Michael Palin is an eight-part television BBC documentary travel series, first broadcast on BBC 1 in 1992, and presented by comedian and actor Michael Palin. The programme is the sequel to Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin, and was the second of Palin's major journeys, the series focusing on a journey along the 30-degree east line of longitude from the North Pole to the South Pole, sticking to using mainly cars, buses, trains and ships to make the 5-month journey, while travelling through northern and eastern Europe, and Africa; a last-minute change of plans led to the journey diverting through South America, in order to reach Antarctica.
Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin is a 7-part BBC television travel series first broadcast on BBC1 in 1989, and presented by comedian and actor Michael Palin. Inspired by Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, in which a character named Phileas Fogg accepts a wager to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less, Palin takes on the same task, prohibited from using aircraft in order to use a combination of trains, boats and other forms of transport, to take him across several countries around his circumnaviation of the world, including Italy, Egypt, China, Japan, and the United States.
Chapeltown railway station, originally known as Chapeltown South, is a railway station serves the Sheffield suburb of Chapeltown in South Yorkshire, England. The station is 7.25 miles (12 km) north of Sheffield on the Hallam and Penistone Lines.
Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México or National Railways of Mexico was Mexico's state owned railroad company from 1938 to 1998, and prior to 1938, a major railroad controlled by the government that linked Mexico City to the major cities of Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros on the U.S. border. The first trains to Nuevo Laredo from Mexico City began operating in 1903.
Christopher Richard Watson is an English musician and sound recordist. A founding member of the Sheffield-based industrial band Cabaret Voltaire, Watson's subsequent work in field recordings since 1981 has included television documentaries and experimental musical collaborations.
Hensall railway station serves the village of Hensall in North Yorkshire, England. It is located on the Pontefract Line and is 22 miles (35 km) east of Leeds. The line is used regularly by the freight companies GB Railfreight, Freightliner and DB Cargo UK that transport coal and limestone to Drax and remove the gypsum created by the flue-gas treatment equipment. The branch line to the power plant diverges just to the east of the station and was formerly supervised from the nearby signal box, but is now remotely controlled from Ferrybridge signalling centre.
Great British Railway Journeys is a 2010–present BBC documentary series presented by Michael Portillo, a former Conservative MP and Cabinet Minister who was instrumental in saving the Settle to Carlisle line from closure in 1989. The documentary was first broadcast in 2010 on BBC Two and has returned annually for a current total of 15 series.
Ian Peter Marchant is an English writer, broadcaster and performer born in Shalford, Surrey, England. He is best known for his non-fiction—mainly travel writing and memoir—but he has also written two novels and several other books, as well as short stories and newspaper articles. He has made programmes for BBC Radio and for UK regional television. Marchant is a Lecturer in Creative Writing in the School of English at Birmingham City University.
Ken Stephinson was an English television director and producer. He began working for Tyne-Tees Television in 1958, and later worked at BBC Manchester. While working for the BBC, he produced the first series of Great Railway Journeys, which included the first occasion of Michael Palin presenting a travel programme. He died from cancer in November 2012, at the age of 79.
Great Continental Railway Journeys is a British television documentary series presented by Michael Portillo. In the early series, Portillo explores the railway networks of continental Europe, but in later series he also ventured further afield. He refers to a 1913 copy of Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide, as he describes how the places he visits have changed since Edwardian times. The first series was originally broadcast on BBC Two in 2012, and the seventh and final series was first aired in 2020.
Tweet of the Day is a British radio programme that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on weekdays at 05:58 from Monday to Friday. The original format of an episode is a short programme of 90 seconds, the original series featuring the song or sounds of a British bird, visitor, or bird chorus and a few facts about each bird described by a BBC wildlife presenter.
Great American Railroad Journeys is a BBC travel documentary series presented by Michael Portillo and broadcast on BBC Two. Using an 1879 copy of Appleton's Guidebook to the railroads of the United States and Canada, Portillo travels across the United States and Canada primarily by train, though at times using other forms of transportation where necessary. On his journeys, he makes stops to learn how places, events and people, and the railroads of the 19th century influenced the country's growth into a major superpower.
El Tren Fantasma is a 2011 album by Chris Watson. It was released on 14 November 2011 by independent record label Touch Music on CD and 12" vinyl record.
Great Australian Railway Journeys is a BBC Two documentary series produced by Boundless and presented by Michael Portillo.
Great Asian Railway Journeys is a 20-part BBC travel and history documentary series produced by Boundless and presented by Michael Portillo, a former Conservative MP and Minister of State for Transport. Following the format of the highly successful Great British Railway Journeys and related series with Portillo as presenter, each episode features a railway journey in south-east Asia using Bradshaw's Through Routes to the Chief Cities, and Bathing, and Health Resorts of the World (1913) as a historical reference, in order to consider how the places visited have changed over the preceding century.
Great Coastal Railway Journeys is a BBC documentary series produced by Naked West and presented by Michael Portillo, a former Conservative MP and Minister of State for Transport.
