Trains

Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford climb on board Britain's trains to find out whether they offer value for money. On the trail of the £8 billion of fares and £4 billion of public money that go into the nation's trains each year, they discover a rail system that is struggling to contend with outdated infrastructure and more passengers than at any time in living memory.

ITV - Emergency: Trains vs Weather (2015)
HDTV | 1280x720 | .MKV/AVC @ 2467 Kbps | 46mn 10s | Audio: English AC3 384 kbps, 2 channels | Subs: None | 961 MiB
Genre: Documentary

What does it take to keep Britain’s railway services running through some of the worst winter weather on record ? This documentary follows the army of engineers and maintenance teams as they battle against the elements to keep the rail network open and prevent the delays which cause misery to millions of passengers every winter. Using the latest technology and sheer old fashioned graft we see them tackling floods, hurricane force winds and tracks buried under 6 feet of snow not to mention the annual blight of leaves on the line. With millions depending on the trains every day the maintenance teams are the unsung heroes of the rail network battling to keep the trains running whatever the British weather throws at them.

This late-'80s work finds the minimalist composer mixing acoustic and taped material to great effect. The disc's centerpiece is "Different Trains," a work that frames Reich's impressions of his boyhood train trips between his mother in Los Angeles and his father in New York; Reich also intersperses references to the much more harrowing train rides Jews were forced to take to Nazi concentration camps. Using the fine playing of the Kronos Quartet as a base, Reich layers the work with the taped train musings of his governess, a retired Pullman porter, and various Holocaust survivors – vintage train sounds from the '30s and '40s add to the riveting arrangement. And for some nice contrast, Reich recruits guitarist Pat Metheny to create a similarly momentous piece in "Electric Counterpoint" (Metheny plays live over a multi-tracked tape of ten guitars and two electric basses). Two fine works by Reich in his prime.