Paul Merton: Driving Amazing Trains — Season 1

On the Isle of Wight, Paul follows in the footsteps of his tube driver dad by riding up front on the very trains his father would have driven on the Northern Line - now in service on the island. After driving a heritage steam, Paul helps a cow give birth. His journey finishes with a look at how the island was prepared in secret to help with D-Day.

Paul visits Switzerland, travelling up front on the Glacier Express through some of Europe's most beautiful scenery. Then Paul helps stoke a 1920s stream train through the mountains to a world-famous glacier. After driving a funicular train up to the Reichenbach Falls, where Sherlock Holmes met his fictional demise, he finishes by taking a train through the ice to the summit of the Eiger.

Paul travels the French Riviera by train, taking control of a steam engine on the Pine Cone line, and stopping off to ride a historic Solex motor-bicycle and visit France's 'other' D-Day landing site. He rides along the coast from Nice and in the cab of millionaire businessman Paul Ricard's private line, and takes in the beauty of the flamingos and bulls of Provence.

From the Lakes to Whitby, Paul traverses the north of England in the cabs of steam and diesel trains. He battles leaves on the line in a narrow-gauge steam locomotive and then switches to a steam-powered boat for a cruise on Windermere. After experiencing the luxury of Queen Victoria's private carriage, he heads off to drive a 50-ton wartime steam locomotive and a historic hand-powered railway cart, and rides in the cab of a powerful diesel train to Dracula country.

Paul's nostalgic railway journey continues in Wales, where he takes to the footplate of steam and diesel locomotives to get to a sheep market, then rides an ultra-modern 'signal-less' line to watch majestic ospreys. He is put to work servicing a slate-hauling steam train in the birthplace of Thomas the Tank Engine, before a ride in a small locomotive, like the ones that were used to transport tea in India, to experience the quirky beauty of Portmeirion.

The funnyman rides the rails of eastern Germany, where he finds himself in the cab of an unusual electric coal-transporting train and marvels at the ingenuity of the prisoners of Colditz. From there he takes a 'car on rails' made from a Trabant, dives underground into a silver mine by electric train, drives a huge 19th-century locomotive - his biggest steam train yet - and drives a modern tram in Dresden while taking in the rebuilt city's architecture.