Amazing Train Journeys

Season 3

2013 · 6 episodes · 5h 30m in all · 7.0/10

Episodes

1. 

   1. Myanmar

   25 Jul 2013 · 55 min · 7.0/10

   For fifty years Burma was one of the most closed places on the planet; today Myanmar is opening up to the world. Philippe starts at a tiny station bound for Mandalay and its gold-covered Mahamuni Buddha, continues to Bagan, the country's historical and spiritual heart, rides Yangon's Circle Line and ends on the Slow Train, crawling along the shores of Inle Lake at 8 kilometres an hour.

2. 

   2. South Africa

   1 Aug 2013 · 55 min · 7.0/10

   On trains each unlike the next, Philippe travels the southern tip of Africa: commuter trains in Cape Town taken over by preachers, the legendary Rovos Rail, one of the most luxurious trains in the world, and the Shosholoza from Johannesburg, with a stop at a farm saving rhinos. The trip ends on the Phelophepa, a clinic on rails bringing health care to the country's most remote communities.

3. 

   3. Brazil

   8 Aug 2013 · 55 min · 7.0/10

   Philippe discovers Brazil in carriages often taken over by musicians, rolling along to the rhythm of samba. He starts in Salvador, the city of 365 churches, with a visit to Nosso Senhor do Bonfim on its sacred hill, continues to the far north and stations lost deep in the Amazon rainforest, and off Belém visits the island of Marajó and its buffalo.

4. 

   4. Philippines

   15 Aug 2013 · 55 min · 7.0/10

   More than 7,000 islands, some of them, against all odds, linked by rail. From Manila, Philippe takes a train to the south of the city, rides a jeepney into the mountains, and discovers a local curiosity: a small wheeled platform on the tracks, whose passengers must jump off fast when a real train comes.

5. 

   5. United States

   22 Aug 2013 · 55 min

   From Chicago and its elevated Loop, Philippe heads for the American West, a land now crossed by plane or car rather than by train. He stops in Wyoming and Colorado, where a legendary steam train has carried materials through the mountains since 1882, and ends in Utah's Monument Valley, on Navajo land.

6. 

   6. Madagascar

   9 Aug 2013 · 55 min · 7.0/10

   In the east of the island continent, Philippe rides a small passenger train, watches zebu fights, takes the Trans Lémurie Express, meets an old Micheline railcar still in service and follows a line through the tropical rainforest.