Secrets & Lies

The strategic importance of trains has resulted in many elaborate schemes and methods being devised to destroy them. Historian Neil Faulkner tells the story of Lawrence of Arabia and his pioneering guerrilla warfare against the railways of the Ottoman Empire. We track down a train used by the SOE in the Second World War to teach their agents how to de-rail locomotives. Under New York's Grand Central Terminal is a railway secret: a generator called M42 that its claimed Nazi spies tried to destroy in the Second World War. Under New York's Waldorf Astoria is another secret: rusting in a siding is President Roosevelt's personal train that brought him secretly into the city.