Monty Python meets steam engine!

[SCrails]

Hey, all you fans of Monty Python and steam locomotives: go find Michael Palin's New Europe travel video series, episode 6 entitled From Pole to Pole. He sits at the controls of a steam locomotive for a regularly scheduled run in Poland. The segment made me appreciate the complexity of operating one of these great machines.

And in episode 3, Wild East, he travels through wooded mountains on a small steam logging train, complete with a contingent of lumberjacks. Of course, the temptation was too much - watch it and you'll see what I mean! Better yet, search YouTube for "I'm a Lumberjack" before watching this episode.

I got these vids via NetFlix, but as they are BBC productions you may be able to find them elsewhere.

Happy watching!

 

[MikefromCrete]

Michael Palin is a big rail fan _ or trainspotter as they're known in the U.K. He's done a lot of shows featuring train travel, including one series where he traveled around the world by train, ship and miscellaneous land transportation.

 

[PRR 60]

Michael Palin is a big rail fan _ or trainspotter as they're known in the U.K. He's done a lot of shows featuring train travel, including one series where he traveled around the world by train, ship and miscellaneous land transportation.

In the 1991 series "Pole to Pole" he travelled from the geographic North Pole to the geographic South Pole through Europe and Africa. That was a pretty neat trick. There were lots of trains in that series, including one where there were as many people riding on the roof of the train as there were riding inside the train. How he finally made it to the South Pole from Cape Town, South Africa was very imaginative.