Original subtitles

All around the world, great wilderness railroads open up frontiers once thought

impossible to reach.

Traversing the toughest terrain.

This is my kind of fun now.

Overcoming nature's unique challenges.

We have to clear the snow 24 -7.

And requiring innovative solutions.

We had to have elephants to help us.

They make the impossible possible.

Today, if someone said to build a train through these mountains, you would think

they're crazy.

But this happened.

From the world's wildest waters to its mightiest mountains,

railroads have set out to conquer them all.

What a feat of engineering.

Absolutely amazing.

Driven by daring engineers for whom no obstacle is too great.

I truly love this structure.

It's magnificent.

Deep in the Californian wilderness, engineer Dan Dickrell is riding the

board a specially adapted truck.

following a route once dubbed the Impossible Railroad to discover a truly

extraordinary feat of engineering.

Right now we're about 85 miles outside of San Diego, and the terrain outside is

as wild as it gets.

But where we're headed to this morning is well worth this difficult journey.

In 1906, San Diego entrepreneur John D.

Spreckels decided he could defy the odds. and build a railroad to transform

city's fortunes.

Stretching from the coast to the city of El Centro in southeastern California,

it would span 148 miles across rough terrain.

Conditions out here are extreme, temperatures ranging from well over 100

Fahrenheit to well below freezing.

There's landslides, earthquakes, floods, the list goes on.

Many thought these incredible natural challenges would defeat the engineers.

And even for Dan and the maintenance crew in a modern high -rail truck, it

doesn't take long to discover how this impossible railroad earned its

reputation.

Working my way ahead of you and working your way back. All right, gotcha.

How often do you have to do this?

Depends on the wind.

Yeah.

A lot of times it'll come here and it'll be full from there all the way to the

other end.

The fact that we're not too far outside the civilization and we're already

clearing debris of the tracks is a pretty good indication of how

things are going to get here quite quickly.

But drifting sand was only the start of the challenges facing the original

engineers of this desert railroad.

As the track rises through the Anza Borrego Desert State Park, this scorched

terrain presents even more problems.

It's always a big problem here with falling rocks, rock slides, landslides.

There's a lot of instability. It's always a challenge to keep the line

You throw around the word impossible, but then when you get up into this

and see just how steep and rocky and effectively alien it all

is, it is truly impossible.

And the fact that it's here, though,

meant somebody got it done.

And during its 12 -year construction... The impossible railroad's biggest hurdle

was the 11 -mile -long Carrizo Gorge.

We reached the end of the line for our truck.

A brutal environment that still wreaks havoc today.

There's one huge obstacle in our way. This landslide we'll have to scramble

over, crawl through the tunnel, and emerge on the other side to get where we

want to go.

Well, this is my kind of fun now.

In the face of this unforgiving landscape, the railroad's original

could have easily given up.

But they had a monumental solution to beat nature into submission.

This

is

the Goat Canyon Trestle.

A properly breathtaking engineering marvel.

I truly love this structure.

It's beauty.

It's majesty.

It's magnificent.

At 180 feet tall and spanning more than 650 feet, the Goat Canyon

Trestle is widely regarded as the world's largest curved wooden trestle.

Incredibly, it was built in just over 100 days, following yet another of the

Impossible Railroad's natural disasters.

Before its construction, there was a train route through Goat Canyon along a

precarious ledge and through a nearby tunnel.

But this passageway, called Tunnel 15, didn't last.

Just ahead, we can see Tunnel 15. When a huge landslide broke loose, it

partially collapsed the interior of the tunnel, but also dislodged the portal

itself, sliding it down the mountain, causing irreparable damage.

The closure of Tunnel 15 was potentially fatal for the project.

But with so much money already invested in its success, a bold decision was

made.

Bridge Goat Canyon to reopen the line.

But to build here, engineers had the challenge of transporting materials to

remote, rocky location.

Anything heavy would be impractical, so they opted for wood.

This was a perfect lightweight solution.

But with desert temperatures reaching up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, any crossing

train could spark yet another problem, fire.

Now, engineers came with a very innovative solution.

Up there, there's a water tank. And you can see the pipe that comes down and

connects to a series of valves and hoses at various levels underneath the

trestle.

Manually operated by a caretaker stationed at the canyon, the gravity

sprinkler system would be activated prior to a train crossing the Goat

trestle.

So here we can see remnants of the old sprinkler system.

Water stored in the tank is gravity -fed down through pipes, which you can see

extends all the way behind me down the trestle.

When the caretaker opens the master valve, the water is distributed through

valves and sprinkler heads that dampens the entire structure, preventing a

catastrophic fire. It's brilliant.

But the demands of carrying trains weighing over 80 tons across the lengthy

wooden trestle posed more challenges.

When it came to construction,

nailing the trestle timbers together simply wasn't an option.

Imagine a train passing overhead.

The weight of the train, its heavy load, would cause a significant amount of

vibration. If the wooden structure was nailed together, it would be extremely

rigid, ultimately shaking itself apart and removing the nails almost entirely.

Instead, engineers bolted 30 miles worth of timber together, forming a semi

-rigid structure that allowed any vibrations to pass safely through the

and into the ground below.

It may seem like a small thing, but the use of bolted facets is a big reason why

this structure is still standing today.

The Goat Canyon trestle here in Southern California.

allowed passengers and freight to safely cross the Carrizo Gorge for decades.

In an extreme wilderness, this engineering marvel undoubtedly played

keeping this ambitious line open.

It survived all nature could throw at it until 2008, when this section of line

was finally closed.

But now there are plans to reopen it.

Today, hope remains that once again this rail line can carry freight across an

unforgiving landscape, giving new life to the impossible railway.

Whether those plans succeed or not, the Goat Canyon trestle remains a monument

to human effort, endeavor, and engineering.

But other railroad challenges require completely different solutions.

In a remote part of the world where almost nothing survived,

getting a railroad to the top of a mountain can be a tall order.

Many wilderness railroads cross great distances of flat terrain.

But when they have to go up, it's a whole new world of challenges.

At almost 10 ,000 feet, the steep climbs of the sheer cliffs of the Bernese

Highlands in the Swiss Alps are only accessible to mountaineers.

You only have to look at this lofty wilderness to appreciate why it might be

last place to build a railroad.

But in the late 19th century, one intrepid train engineer not only took on

unforgiving terrain, he chose to build a railroad up through three of its most

extreme and iconic mountains.

Here we are, standing in front of the famous three mountains, the Eiger on the

left, the Mönch, and the Jungfrau.

All three of them roughly about 4 ,000 meters high.

At over 13 ,000 feet above the ground, these three mighty summits fascinated

lucky few who made the tough journey.

But near the turn of the 19th century, the majestic mountains also began to

attract the general public.

As interest grew, entrepreneur Adolf Geier -Zeller was determined to build a

railroad to bring these mighty mountains to the masses.

His remarkable achievement is the Jungfrau Railway.

A railroad that climbs 4 ,600 feet through a vicious wilderness of rock,

snow.

And at the end of the line is Europe's highest train station.

Train controller Christopher Sudhall has experienced the challenges of working

at this location firsthand.

The weather can change within seconds, really.

It can be from a summer 25 degrees here to a winter of minus 25 with extreme

weather, high winds, thunderstorms, snowstorms, snow drifting.

Today, we're lucky.

Instead of building to withstand the weather, Geier Zeller's innovative

was to avoid it altogether.

He decided to build a train that could climb through the inside of a mountain.

From the base station at Kleine Scheidig, at 6 ,500 feet above sea

first mile and a quarter of the train route is above ground.

But then the plan called for over four miles of tunnels to be blasted through

the three enormous mountains.

This was very difficult and very dangerous to know.

There was about 300 employers and 30 people died.

But as tour guide Roland Fonteneuve is about to find out, although building a

railway inside a mountain avoids the weather, It creates yet another

impossible problem.

Geier Zeller was operating in a golden age of steam.

But coal -powered trains and long underground journeys aren't a good mix.

If you do, the exhaust from the coal would coat everyone on

the train.

The only option was to go by electric.

But when you're more than two miles above sea level in the middle of the

wilderness, finding an electric supply for your train seems to be an impossible

challenge.

However, Geier Zeller turned the wilderness to his advantage, creating

extraordinary solution.

He need to build hydroelectric power station before they can build the

Geier Zeller built his own hydropower plant nine miles from the railroad,

providing a dedicated and ready supply of electricity.

Fed

from

a local river.

The power is generated by funneling its water down an enormous 525 -foot drop.

This one is from an old generator, and the water from the river is falling like

this, and then the wheel is turning, and so with this type, we are producing

electricity.

Over 1 ,000 gallons of water per second flow through these wheels, feeding

energy into the generator above.

As we said in the upper part is the generator, and here you can see the high

voltage cables.

So in these cables are 6 ,000 volts, so we can touch them, and it feels pretty

warm, so that's the electricity we feel at this cable.

Going uphill, of course, it's just the power of the motors and the electricity

getting the train up to the top. But coming down, the motor actually works as

generator and it's actually generating electricity.

80 % is reserved for its braking power, but the last 20 % is actually put back

up into the power cable.

So in theory, you could say five trains down and we send up one train for free.

Electric motors drive a rack and pinion system that transports around 5 ,000

passengers a day up the steep 35 -minute climb.

Now we're coming up to the tunnel.

No matter what the weather is on the ground.

When we go up in the winter, we didn't have to push the snow away.

It's always free, you know.

And so you can go up 365 days in the air.

I think that time their only choice was to build the tunnel.

During its construction, this hugely ambitious railroad's cost doubled.

But the industrious Geyer Zeller had an additional money -making project in the

works.

Partway up his tunnel, he created a station and viewing platform known as

IceMir, or Sea of Ice.

As his workers continued to dig to the top of the mountain, Trains would bring

paying guests to this midpoint to marvel at Icmere's beautiful vista, raising

valuable revenue.

Wow, good.

In the beginning, they had some mountain guides that go hiking with the guests

so you could go outside.

I thank you.

Very nice view.

You can see in the eyes, in the crovas, you see the crovas of the glacier.

Today, this is no longer the end of the line for the train passengers.

The impossible railroad has one more mighty climb to tackle.

All this work can create wear and tear that could see the crucial rack and

pinion fail.

Here we have one of our drivers lubricating one of the trains.

To ensure nothing is damaged, engineers have developed a special oiling system.

These two tanks, it's about 10 liters of oil, and that will be enough for about

1 ,000 kilometers of this train to go up and down.

Every 50 seconds, the rack and cog are automatically sprayed with an 8 -second

burst of oil.

It not only lubricates the rack and pinion, the cog, but it also lubricates

wheels. So the track will also have less wear and tear.

It is very essential that these trains are lubricated, and this oil system

due to the possibility of a derailment, which, of course, no train company wants

to have.

Ingenious Engineering ensures the Jungfrau Railway reaches the end of the

more than two miles above sea level, where its passengers are greeted by a

viewpoint that would have once been impossible to reach by anyone other than

toughest mountaineers.

Something special for people.

The entrepreneur Adolf Geier -Zeller never got to enjoy the spectacular view.

Though he died before its completion, his impossible railroad remains as his

legacy, having conquered this great wilderness.

Today, if someone said to build a train through these mountains, you would think

they're crazy. But this happened.

105 years ago, they completed it.

It happened.

These mountains pose multiple problems for engineers.

Around the world, railroads must cross many diverse landscapes.

And the jungle presents an altogether different wilderness challenge.

In Thailand, during World War II, prisoners of war had to build a railroad

thought impossible.

Each year, thousands of international tourists make the journey to the

Auberi region in southern Thailand.

All of them drawn to the magnificent landscape and a once unthinkable

railroad line.

Around three trains a day make the two -hour journey from Khenchen Auberi

station north to Namtok.

and the waterfalls of the Saiyak Noi National Park, near the border of

also known as Burma.

It's a popular trip, but this is a railroad that was once thought to be

impossible.

Since the 19th century, a wilderness railroad had been considered between

was then called Burma and Thailand, but was thought too difficult and dangerous

because of the many rivers and dense, hilly jungle.

But the middle of the 20th century brought a brutal New World Order.

In 1942, during the Second World War, the Japanese army captured the British

colony of Singapore, enslaving more than 200 ,000 local residents and 60

,000 Allied troops, including an injured 23 -year -old gunner, Fergus Ankhorn.

The Japanese came into the hospital, then... They went out with the walking

wounded, and I said to the man lying on a stretcher beside me, what's going on?

Fergus and the other prisoners of war were eventually sent to build what is

a major tourist attraction, the Thai -Burma Railway and the infamous bridge

the River Kwai.

By using a workforce made up of forced laborers from the local population and

prisoners of war, the Japanese military had decided they could build this

impossible travel route almost 250 miles long through the jungle and use it as a

supply route for their army.

The brutal conditions that led to over 100 ,000 fatalities earned it the name

the Death Railway.

The working day.

Up at dawn, a handful of rice to eat,

working 18 hours,

30 degrees of sun.

Within two weeks, we didn't know the days of the week.

In the jungle, of course, it was virgin jungle.

No one had ever been there.

And we had no contact with anybody.

And I said, when is the war's over?

Who won?

For those building this railway, the infamous bridge would not be the end of

line.

On the cliffs beside the Kwai Noi River,

Fergus Ankhorn and his fellow POWs and enslaved local laborers would be made to

build one of the most extraordinary and iconic engineering features on the line,

the Wangpo Viaduct.

Well, the Wangpo Viaduct was an immense affair.

It was nearly a mile, I think,

and it was around the side of a mountain, about 100 feet up.

So we had to blast the mountain away with the dynamite.

Very, very dangerous.

It was the only job I was on where we had to have elephants to help us.

Today, tourists, including Matthew Bell and Philip Holmes, make the precarious

journey to experience this remarkable railway.

Constructed mainly by hand, local enslaved laborers and prisoners of war

teak and concrete trestle that clings to a ledge between the cliffs and the

river below.

But this was engineering the prisoners were hoping was not built to last.

Apparently, the prisoners of war tried to sabotage the building of the bridge

collecting termites and putting them into the woodwork frame of the original

bridge.

What do you call a long -term fan? Yeah, definitely.

We assembled it, and on every joint, we put a handful of termites

in every joint, hoping they would eat the bridge when we'd gone.

I found out later that they don't like tea.

It's hard.

They can't do it, so they're still there.

Do you know what? Could you imagine being in that situation? You have no

how long the war was going to go.

It has been recorded that two shifts of 1 ,000 men each worked day and night

continuously, completing the Wangpo Viaduct in just 17 days.

Despite mass malnutrition, dysentery, and malaria among the workers, the

railway with nearly 700 bridges and viaducts was completed in less than a

but at an enormous cost of life, with over 100 ,000 fatalities.

It's just so sad.

It's just so, so tragic. How could you stand up to be counted?

It's just so anonymous.

It's just one of the many number of people who died. I just think it's

I mean, you've seen the film, right?

Yeah.

I hear that, you know, that doesn't even come close to the

terrible conditions of these people's suffering.

After the war, most of the Wilderness Railway was soon reclaimed by the

What remains is a tribute to the workers like Fergus, who survived the infamous

Death Railway.

and the many thousands who didn't.

I mean, Wampa Varduck, imagine building that by hand.

So we did a good job.

It always beats me how the Japanese, who spoke no English, and the English, who

spoke no Japanese, built a thing like that Varduck.

Whether crossing jungles, deserts, or mountains, the challenges facing a

wilderness railway are often apparent.

But sometimes hidden problems lie beneath the surface.

In Scotland, engineers must figure out how to get across a giant bog.

For railroad engineers, nature's obstacles are usually plain to see.

They can go through them, under them, or over

them. But sometimes the challenges can take you by surprise.

The West Highlands of Scotland, a beautiful wilderness enjoyed by millions

visitors every year.

But in the late 1800s, this wild terrain filled train engineers with

trepidation.

Back in the 1880s, when people were building railways all over Britain,

Scotland didn't have that many railways. And the rich fishing grounds of the

west coast of Scotland meant that it was absolutely imperative to try and get a

railway built down to Glasgow.

Linking the valuable resources from the Atlantic to the rest of Britain would

require a daring railway solution.

The West Highland Line.

Stretching 123 miles from Glasgow to the Highlands, Fort William, the Wilderness

Line crosses dense forests and extreme mountains.

landscape to challenge any rail engineer.

But what makes this impossible railway is perhaps the route's most innocuous

scenery, the stretch of land called the Rannock Moor.

I never get tired of this moor. I never get tired of the views to the mountains

in the background, the small plantations of fir trees.

It may be flat, open terrain, but the 50 -square -mile moor presented a

potentially devastating problem for the railway's engineers, as historian Doug

Carmichael is about to find out when he follows in their footsteps.

I'm not quite sure we're going to get across this.

Rannick Moor is essentially one giant bog, wet, muddy ground.

You can just see how soft the ground is underfoot here.

On face value, building a railway through here looked like an impossible

This ground can hardly support my weight, so you can imagine the challenge

was for the engineers to put a railway over it.

With a soft and unstable foundation, the railroad's plans were thinking fast.

Engineer Charles Foreman was part of the team that solved this shaky wilderness

problem.

The idea was he would use the resources around him.

First of all, he took large quantities of this brushwood and laid it on the

bogs. Then he took even larger quantities of branches and timber, and

took turf from all over the moor and laid that on top of the brushwood.

Foreman then topped off this layer with a mixture of crushed stone and gravel

called aggregate.

We get all the aggregate out and we put it on.

And finally, I'm going to prove that it works.

And it works.

The railway did not sink anymore.

Constructed over the course of five years with up to 5 ,000 workers at a

creating the 23 -mile stretch across the Rannock Moor.

was perhaps the West Highlands' most hard -won achievement.

I can't imagine what it must have been like all those years ago to build a

railway through an environment like this. Quite an incredible achievement.

One area of the Boggy Moor, however, would need much more than sticks and

stones.

They got to here, and they found that there was a thousand -foot -wide

depression, so they decided they would have to build a viaduct.

They had to dig down through yards and yards until they finally hit boulder

clay, and they were able to erect these towers.

And eventually, a nine -span viaduct took shape.

Almost 700 feet long, Rannick Viaduct is the second longest segment on the West

Highland Line.

Beaten only by its most famous crossing, the magical Glenfinnan Viaduct that has

captured the imagination of train enthusiasts and film buffs alike.

The West Highland Line breathed life into remote communities and, more

importantly still, tourism came to the West Highlands.

Thanks to Inspired Solutions.

This impossible railway has opened up Scotland's wildest land.

But for some railways in the world's most extreme locations... In a bad

we can expect four and a half meters of snow. You have to be good prepared to

stay alive here in the winter.

overcoming Mother Nature can be all but impossible.

From uncharted territory to sinking ground.

Engineers are an ingenious bunch, but there's one thing that can outwit them.

The weather.

And in an isolated wilderness, that can be a massive problem.

Norway, home to a bathed frozen wilderness.

where winters are some of the harshest on the planet.

With some areas engulfed by snow for up to five months of the year, it's no

wonder this is one of Europe's most sparsely populated regions.

As project manager Karl Morten -Undahl is well aware.

As you can see here, the landscape is... We are alone here.

It's about...

15 kilometers to the nearest station where people are living, so we are

alone up there.

This remote Norwegian environment receives huge snowfalls, creating drifts

feet deep.

Yet unbelievably, it is home to Northern Europe's highest rail route,

the Bergen Railway.

We have a railroad crossing through one of the most beautiful parts of Norway.

I love my work.

During the 1800s, the only way to travel between the major cities of Oslo and

Bergen was a week -long voyage by ship.

But in 1909, they were connected by this ambitious railway.

Traveling east to west, the line first passes through pasture land, but on

reaching Guilo, it climbs more than 3 ,000 feet in just 62 miles, as this

railway enters the Hardonga Vida mountain range.

Compared to other railways, I think it's extremely challenging when they did

that more than 100 years ago.

But former railway engineer Inge Hirte is under no illusion.

Keeping the railroad open is an even bigger undertaking.

In a bad winter, we can expect four and a half meters of snow.

You have to be good prepared to stay alive here in the winter.

At 4 ,100 feet.

Sanda, a snow -swept plateau, was once the most notorious section of this

wilderness railroad.

This section of the line was the worst when it comes to snow problems.

We have to clear the snow 24 -7.

Now this section of railway has been beaten into submission by relentless

Nature.

So we had no choice.

We had to abandon this track.

Just over six miles away, Carl and his team must somehow protect the

line over an 18 -mile weather -beaten stretch.

On the rest over here, we're going to build around 60, 70 meters this way.

To catch some of the water coming down from the mountain.

The snow together with the wind will fill up this railroad on just 20, 30

minutes on a rough winter day.

Ensuring the impossible railway remains open calls for an inspired solution

in one of the world's most unforgiving landscapes.

In the frozen wilderness of Norway, it's a race against time.

As the snow piles up, engineers must find a way to keep the

Oslo -Bergen railroad line open.

On a rough winter day, it can cover the tracks in as little as 20 to 30 minutes.

That's not enough time to keep the line open with a snowblower.

So we need to also have the snowsheds protection.

Around seven and a half miles of snowsheds cover the track,

keeping up to 23 -foot snowdrifts at bay.

But many have been in place for over 50 years.

We know walking into the old snowsheds built up in a wooden structure

with aluminium plates outside, And some of them are actually now in really bad

shape. In the summertime, we had water problem here. In the wintertime, icing.

And of course, that is not very good for the wooden part here.

As we can see, it's rotten.

To keep the railway running, Carl and his team are currently modernizing these

aging weather defenses.

Now we're building up a new one with steel and the steel plates also outside.

Steel will come up on this concrete wall here.

In the wintertime, tons of snow will pressure on this wall and we need to

it safely.

Without snowshare protection in this area, it will be a very big challenge

us to keep the railway open.

But even snowsheds couldn't save the section at the now desolate Sanda

Avoiding the weather here called for a monumental construction project.

A daring $63 million six -mile tunnel cut directly through a solid granite

mountain.

It was opened in 1993 after three years of work.

And it has made the line much more reliable, and it has reduced snow

costs with about 50%. So in around 13 years, this tunnel paid itself.

This engineering success story is just another chapter in the extraordinary

history of a truly pioneering cross -country railway.

The Oslo -Bergen line was really a revolution.

The line has been very important for more than 100 years.

This line is a lifeline for support of the western part of Norway.

I would say this is one of the most incredible railways in the world, Bergen

Line.

Since the 1800s, wilderness railways have forged seemingly impossible paths.

Through the world's most unforgiving landscapes.

Through stunning achievements.

Almost from the very start of this project, people were calling it the

impossible railroad.

This is an incredible wilderness railway. I take my cap off to the

built it.

And groundbreaking innovations.

The train journey up is just the most amazing. One of the top ten in the whole

world for sure.

Engineers continue to defy the odds and make the impossible possible.

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