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Memories of the railways and shipbuilding in Victorian Scotland

We hear stories of the railway builders and Glasgow shipyards. The men who built the trains also built the ships which carried them across the world. Glasgow鈥檚 Clydeside was the workshop of the Victorian Empire, building 1 in 4 of the ships made in the world. Almost all work was done by hand and was difficult and heavy. Demand for ships was very high and the shipbuilders worked hard to meet that demand.

Archive film footage shows shipbuilders working in cloth caps and jackets, ships being launched and trains rushing past. This is compared with the docks today containing a museum to the history of transport and no heavy industry. The piece ends with Robert Louis Stevenson鈥檚 poem 'From a Railway Carriage'.

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2 minutes

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