Pete Waterman's Making Tracks

The story of what runs underneath the trains: how Making Tracks 4’s four main lines are chopped into electrical blocks, how every train is detected every four feet, and how one two-wire network carries every button press, point move and signal — not a computer in sight. Around nine minutes, with commentary.

Meet the real locomotive that carries Pete Waterman’s name: the naming ceremony at Crewe, the story of the Class 90, and a live map that follows 90041 around Britain using the railway’s own reports — wherever it is right now. Around nine minutes.

How a station screen knows your train is late — and why no screen in Britain will tell you about a two-thousand-tonne freight train. Follow the railway’s own data feeds all the way from the rails to our screens, ending on a live map of the biomass trains feeding Drax power station. Around seven minutes, with commentary.

How many model railways have you seen with a working departure board? Ours announce trains as they actually run: this is how the boards listen to the layout, match what they hear to the timetable, and update — just like the real railway. Around five minutes, with commentary.

A whole exhibition weekend, replayed. We record every lap, every point move and every signal change on the layout — and the Big Board turns it into a live scoreboard: laps, scale distances, and the moments the lead changed at Model World Live. Around four minutes, with commentary.

The railway looks after its own. Pete Waterman is President of the Railway Benefit Fund, the charity that stands behind railway people and their families in hard times — this is what they do, what it costs, and how locomotive 90041 helps carry the message. Around six minutes.

Real UK colour-light signalling, run entirely by the trains. Watch four signals guard a plain line with nobody touching a thing, then see the five junction control modes drawn live — finishing with a full crossover move, protected end to end. Around five minutes, with commentary.

A conducted tour of System2 AutoSignal working the Making Tracks 4 layout end to end: trains despatch themselves, every signal answers the line behind it, and the whole story is narrated step by step as it happens. Around six minutes, with commentary.