Portillo's railways: Derby event anchors second episode of 200 Years Of The Railways

Michael Portillo's BBC Two series 200 Years Of The Railways marks its second episode with a stop in Derby for The Greatest Gathering, a locomotive-filled event that Roland White describes in the Daily Mail as “Glastonbury with better toilets” for train spotters. Portillo's energy during the visit—moving from the working replica of Locomotion No. 1 to the throng of steam engines—serves as a focal point of the feature, which White frames around Portillo's infectious enthusiasm.

White's piece portrays Portillo as an engaged guide through two centuries of rail travel, threading milestone moments with personal anecdotes and a dash of lighthearted humor, including a BBC Radio Derby interview in which the big question, about Portillo's trousers, eclipses more technical railway talk. The review suggests Portillo's gift lies in turning dense history into accessible storytelling, a balance the program consistently attempts to strike during the Derby stop and beyond.

Among the program's core claims is that the world's first intercity line—Liverpool to Manchester—opened in 1830 to move cotton from docks to mills. Critics once warned Parliament that trains would disrupt hens and even threaten the horse, a quip Portillo recounts with the same light touch he uses for technical details. The series uses that historical aside to set up a broader argument: railways were not only cheaper and quicker but also reshaped everyday life in tangible ways that rippled through commerce, culture and leisure.

Moving cotton by canal took roughly 12 hours; by rail, the same cargo could be moved in about two hours, carrying ten times the load. The program situates this efficiency as part of a broader surge: over the next nine years, more than 1,500 miles of track were laid across the nation, a tempo the reviewer relates to the scale of later ambitions, including the HS2 project, first proposed about 16 years prior to the current broadcasts. The point, White implies, is less about a single technological breakthrough and more about a transformation in how people lived, moved, and connected across distances.

The episode also underscores the railways' cultural and social consequences. Fresh fish could be moved quickly from ports to metropolitan markets, a development the series flags as contributing to the popularization of fish and chips. Railways are described as a catalyst for mass tourism, a lineage that traces back to Thomas Cook, who began his travel ventures by organizing a rail trip from Leicester to Loughborough for a temperance meeting. The network's reach extended into sport as well: an estimated 60,000 people took the train to the 1904 FA Cup final between Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers, illustrating how rail access broadened a game's audience. The show also traces a more homegrown legacy: the Newton Heath train depot, now known as Manchester United, emerged from the needs—historically—of a rail-centered workforce.

Portillo encapsulates the broader message in a line the reviewer highlights: "Railways were a transformative technology that changed everything about the way people lived." The program, White notes, blends archival history with Portillo's travelogue and personal culture-connecting moments, a combination that appears to have broad appeal beyond traditional railway enthusiasts. The review also points to Portillo's own career arc, noting that rail’s story dovetails with his public life as a former Defence Secretary who later found a flourishing second career in television. In White's framing, the Derby episode reinforces the series’ aim: to illuminate how rail history continues to shape contemporary life as much as it informs our shared memory of transport’s past.