BBC - Great Continental Railway Journeys (2012) Part 5 Amsterdam to Northern France
Michael Portillo retraces the journeys featured in George Bradshaw's 1913 Continental Railway Guide.
Part 5: Amsterdam to Northern France
Michael Portillo uses George Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide to explore the cities of the pre-war Low Countries before tasting the delicacies of Brussels. He then travels to the French sector of the Western Front, where from 1914 the trains carried a new cargo of artillery shells, with the Edwardian tourists of 1913 replaced by soldiers facing the horrors of the trenches. He will end his epic journey in the forest of Compiegne to hear how, after four years of conflict, the Armistice was finally signed in a railway carriage.