Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railway Journeys

Australia's Outback Railway (1x2)

Air date: Dec 12, 2012

In this episode, Chris crosses the Australian Outback on an amazing railway. The 2,000 mile long Adelaide to Darwin railway is commonly known as ‘The Ghan Line’. It is named after the main service that runs on it and the name ‘Ghan’ is said to derive from the Afghan-run camel trains that ferried people and goods across the Outback in the 19th Century. Building the line proved to be a huge engineering challenge that took over 100 years to complete. In his quest to uncover the extraordinary story of this railway, Chris travels from Adelaide to Darwin, following the original ill-fated route of the line. After cruising out of the city on the luxury modern Ghan train, he quickly transfers to one of the line's surviving steam trains before hitting the Outback for real. Dating back to the Afghan days, this remains camel country, but Chris quickly concludes that a modern 4x4 is a more practical means of crossing the Outback. He passes through ghost towns and explores abandoned railway relics before uncovering why most of the southern section of the line eventually had to be abandoned. At Alice Springs the old route and the newline converge. But Chris has now missed the twice weekly luxury passenger service, so he hitches a ride on a mile-and-a-half-long freight train headed for Darwin. After nearly 24 hours in the cramped cab, making friends with a succession of drivers, Chris finally makes it to Darwin.