BBC Radio 2 is marking 200 years of train travel with a new series of songs inspired by real rail stories.
Five artists have each created a folk song based on the lives of people shaped by the UK’s railway network, as part of 21st Century Folk 2025.
The programme returns this month with new songs airing on The Jeremy Vine Show and The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe, and available to watch at bbc.co.uk/folk.
The songs and stories will be broadcast from Monday 28 July to Sunday 3 August.
Contributors include Siggy, an 85-year-old Windrush generation railway worker in London; Charlotte and David from West Yorkshire, who met when David, a train driver, helped Charlotte in a moment of crisis; and Joanne, a cancer survivor and steam railway volunteer from Lancashire.
Other stories include Tom, who was found as a baby in Reading station in 1965, and Ken, a lifelong railway worker from Liverpool with three generations of family history on the tracks.
The music comes from folk names including Richard Thompson, Kate Rusby, Findlay Napier, Chris While & Julie Matthews and Bill Ryder-Jones.
Jeremy Vine will be live from The Greatest Gathering at Alstom in Derby on Friday 1 August, with a live performance from Bill Ryder-Jones.
The week also features a special edition of The Folk Show on Wednesday 30 July, with train-themed music and an interview with Peggy Seeger, whose 1950s BBC Radio Ballads helped shape the format of 21st Century Folk.