It’s genuinely transferring to see how Bourgeois’s ardour for railways has impressed petrolhead Harris and is reigniting that romance for a brand new technology. Look on TikTok, and you’ll discover countless compilations of the world’s best rail journeys.
On the present, viewers will spot quite a lot of Gen Z and millennial lovers serving to to restore the practice alongside the older palms on the Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway. “I want to shine a light on the railway and the beautiful things that exist; the journeys, the locomotives that are still around,” says Bourgeois. “I encourage people to support local heritage railways. They’re moving museums, where you can feel how it would have been. They are everywhere across the country and we should be so proud of them.”
Perhaps there’s a parallel right here. After all, like steam trains earlier than it, broadcast tv is being outdated by new know-how. Yet by borrowing fashionable creatives equivalent to Bourgeois from TikTok and YouTube, new life is being injected into the previous canine.
“Destination television has probably ceded its importance to different ways of broadcasting,” reckons Harris. “I was King Canute fighting the sea on that, but I think that’s gone. Bluntly, you earn more money and get more publicity doing other stuff.
“But we had a passion we could only see through in this format. Francis’s generation might earn their money on short-form content, but television is where they can really celebrate their passions. Long-form documentaries allow you to tell stories, like turning on the engine of an old locomotive; that’s a privilege.”
At the top of the day, that second comes. Harris, within the driver’s field of the locomotive, pushes the buttons, and the Class 37’s engine comes roaring into life. Bourgeois, donning his signature GoPro helmet, beams, respiration deeply and blinking again tears of pleasure. They’ve finished it: with fashionable ardour and old style graft, this majestic monument to Britain’s engineering prowess has been saved.
Francis Bourgeois and Chris Harris: We Saved a Train airs on Quest on April 7 at 9pm
