The People S Railway

Artem Samsurov, an ardent follower of Lenin and a hero of the rebellion, flees his Siberian labor camp for the sanctuary of Brisbane, Australia in 1911. Failing to find the worker’s paradise and brotherhood he imagined, Artem quickly joins the agitation for a general strike among the growing trade union movement. He finds a fellow spirit in a dangerously attractive female lawyer and becomes entangled in the death of another Tsarist exile. But, Atrem can’t overcome the corruption, repression, and injustice of the conservative Brisbane. When he returns to Russia in 1917 for the Red October, will his beliefs stand? Based on the true story of Artem Sergeiv, a Russian immigrant in Australia who would play a vital role in the Russian Revolution, The People’s Train explores the hearts of the men and women who fueled, compromised, and passionately fought for their ideals.

Taking a page from Jules Verne's classic tale, Monisha Rajesh embarked on an adventure around India in eighty trains. Indian trains carry over twenty million passengers daily, plowing through cities, crawling past villages, climbing up mountains, and skimming along coasts. Monisha hopes that her journeys across India will lift the veil on a country that had become a stranger to her.

The Southern Railway between 1923 and 1939 was the only British company to carry out a sustained programme of electrification which became known as the Southern Electric. Unlike many recent projects, each incremental step was completed on time and within budget. This successful project was more impressive as it was achieved during a period of economic stagnation (including the ‘great depression’) and despite government disapproval of the method of electrification. The driving force behind this endeavor was the railway’s general manager, Sir Herbert Walker, but at his side was his electrical engineer, Alfred Raworth, the man one journalist described as an ‘electrification genius’. Alfred Raworth’s career began working with his father the eminent consulting engineer and entrepreneur, John Smith Raworth. Following the collapse of his father’s business Alfred joined the railway industry and devised an ambitious and innovative electrification design. This was discarded when the railways of southern England were ‘grouped’ into the Southern Railway after which he took responsibility for the implementation of the electrification schemes. With Walker’s retirement in 1937, those who continued to support steam traction took the policy lead. A marginalised Raworth retired but was later to witness the fruition of many of his discarded ideas.