THE world-famous Settle-Carlisle line is to feature on BBC One's popular Sunday teatime show Songs of Praise.

Railway archivist Bryan Gray, who lives near Langwathby, was filmed in conversation with presenter David Grant for the episode, to be broadcast on June 25.

The pair were on location at Ribblehead, where Mr Gray recalled the navvies who worked and lived in a remote, wind-blown settlement there in the 1870s. They also visited Chapel-le-Dale, where many railway workers are buried.

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Mr Gray, a Church of England lay minister and a lay canon at Carlisle Cathedral, told the Gazette his fascination with railways began in childhood, when his parents took him to Ribblehead.

He is chairman of the Settle-Carlisle archives, preserved at The Folly, in Settle, home of the diaries kept by a missionary who lived among the railway men and their families in the Yorkshire Dales as the line was carved out of the landscape.

"We have a lot of detailed information about how he spent his time," said Mr Gray. "The conditions were very basic; they lived in wooden huts, typically 15 people in one hut - family with lodgers, or single men.

"The main issue was remoteness and the wildness of the weather. At the peak there were probably 2,000 people living in the remote Yorkshire Dales and it was a very hard life."

As well as accidents, there were outbreaks of disease such as smallpox, and many of the dead rest in unmarked graves at Chapel-le-Dale churchyard. Songs of Praise filmed poignant scenes there, and Mr Gray showed presenter David Grant the church's burial register.

Mr Gray said it was former Bishop of Carlisle Graham Dow who suggested the BBC visit the railway. Mr Dow is a trustee of the Settle and Carlisle Railway Trust, a charitable body that helps restore the line's historic structures and buildings at locations such as Kirkby Stephen and Horton-in-Ribblesdale.

Mr Gray told the Gazette that the line's supporters wanted to see more people use it for business as well as pleasure. He said the railway was still, today, the "lifeblood" of those small communities along its route.