The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway

When I was in London last year, one of the things that impressed me the most was the Tube system. Where we were staying near Regents Park, we were within a 15 minute walk of four Tube stations on several different lines. Now there's a new line, the Elizabeth line, part of what's known as CrossRail, a more than 100-kilometre line crossing London from east to west, built at a cost of more than 15 billion pounds.

The 15 Billion Pound Railway is a five-part documentary about building the Elizabeth line.

If you have any interest in transit or engineering, this is a must see. It is amazing to see the size and complexity of a project like this under construction, and the precision with which it was built. One of the most impressive segments was about running a 1,000 ton tunnelling machine over a running Tube line station with a margin of literally centimetres.

The episodes are occasionally cheesy and there's too much repetition (a problem with most TV docs these days) but are very watchable. I was also impressed by the number of women in senior roles on the project.

All five episodes are on YouTube.