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Saturday 27 September 2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the modern railway, when George Stephenson drove Locomotion No. 1 on its inaugural journey from Shildon to Stockton-on-Tees via Darlington, to great fanfare. The 26-mile journey was a landmark moment in public transport and the springboard for the great Victorian age of the railways, transforming how the world traded, travelled, and communicated.

Radio 3 is celebrating this historic occasion with train enthusiast Petroc Trelawny travelling from Inverness to London on the Highland and East Coast Main Lines, aboard the Highland Chieftain, one of the longest direct train journeys in the UK.

With Petroc having arrived in London, we join Jools Holland at his recording studio - which is itself designed as a railway station - to round off today's celebrations with a special guest, record producer and fellow railway enthusiast Pete Waterman.

Jools introduces music by Georg Philipp Telemann, Richard Strauss, Arthur Crudup and Bob Dylan, and Pete brings along some of his favourite classical pieces by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Saint-Saens. They discuss Pete鈥檚 collection of trains (both full-size and model), his record-breaking model railway layout based on 1930s Leamington Spa, and why making model railways isn鈥檛 so different to making chart-topping pop hits.