Managers of the Stockton to Darlington line wanted to abandon steam power and revert to horses when Stephenson's Locomotion took to the rails in 1825, while critics doubted the safety of Brunel's Maidenhead bridge.

Such scepticism is revealed in the second of this new documentary series tracing the history of railways. The programme reveals that the skills and techniques developed by people like Stephenson and Brunel are still being used in such projects as the Channel Tunnel.

Those early misgivings gave way to a tide of rail-building. Danger lurked, however. "The railways in the 1890s were little less than a slaughterhouse," says railway fireman-turned-historian David McKenna.