蜜芽传媒

Historian Liz McIvor looks at how the railways enabled us to live further and further from the places where we worked.

Before the age of steam, you would need a horse to travel long distances on land. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, our railways encouraged the development of suburbia inhabited by a new type of resident and worker - the commuter. In some cases, new places emerged on the map simply because of the railways - towns like Surbiton.

Liz visits London and the south east of England, our nation's largest commuter zone. The Victorian rail network was never part of a single grand plan, but emerged and evolved, line by line, over decades. For today's commuters, work is still going on to create a system that serves their needs.