Chris Tarrant's Extreme Railways : Series 2

For Chris Tarrant, travelling by train is the best possible way to explore a country, meet the real people and unlock its culture and history. In the second series of Extreme Railways he explores some of the most beautiful environments on Earth - the Andes Mountains in Bolivia and Chile, the jungles of Thailand and Myanmar, the Siberian Arctic, the tropical island of Cuba, the Canadian wilderness, and weird and wonderful Japan. Travelling on an amazing variety of trains, old, new, fast and extremely slow, Chris sees each country, rich in history, culture and stunning scenery, form the inside out, taking it all in his stride with humour, passion and good old fashioned curiosity. Railroad to Mandalay Chris Tarrant is in South East Asia to experience two very different railways. From Bangkok in Thailand to Mandalay in Myanmar, Chriss extreme railway journey takes him nearly two thousand miles through some extraordinary places, rich in history and culture as well as stunning scenery on a series of trains that will push his love of travelling by rail to the limits. Crossing the Andes Chris Tarrant attempts to cross the Andes by train. From the coast of Chile he must traverse some of the highest, driest and most inhospitable environments on the planet, hitch rides on some very unusual trains and deal with altitude sickness at over 4000 metres to reach the capital of Bolivia, Sucre. One Way Ticket to Siberia Chris Tarrant sets out to reach the northernmost railway station on Earth inside Russia's Arctic Circle. Chris embarks on the longest railway journey he's done yet, on some of the toughest railway lines on the planet, built in terrible conditions under brutal regimes. Its an epic 2000 mile adventure from Moscow into Arctic Siberia. Slow Train to Guantanamo Bay Chris Tarrant attempts to cross the length of Cuba, the only island in Caribbean to boast an extensive railway network from Havana in the West to the far east of the Island. Experiencing old and battered trains that often fail to run, this proves far more of a challenge than he had bargained for But these railways are steeped in history from Cubas colonial past, via the revolution to the present day that make for a fascinating journey to Chris ultimate goal, the American naval base at Guantnamo Bay. The Great Japanese Train Ride Chris Tarrant discovers the Land of the Rising Sun is the Land of the Train. Chris journeys a thousand miles across Japan to find out if Japanese railways really are the best in the world and why theyre so obsessed by them. Along the way he meets one of the great architects of the bullet trains, a celebrity Station Master cat, a singing conductress and atomic bomb survivors who kept wartime trams running. The Railway that Created Canada Chris Tarrant discovers how a two and a half thousand mile transcontinental railway was built against huge odds in just a few decades and turned a vast wilderness of isolated communities into the country we now know as Canada. Along the way, Chris drops a few bombs, searches for Winnie the Pooh, crosses raging rivers and explores one of the worlds most formidable mountain ranges and the amazing engineering achievements that conquered them.