Get to know Mike

Series Catchphrase: So!

I sometimes feel like I’ve lived everywhere.

I was born in Lancashire, but got restless after University and so headed South to London as soon as I could to pursue a career in television and (so I thought!) make my fortune!
Despite a degree in music & media production, and training as a camera operator, things didn’t really work out and so, after a couple of redundancies thanks to the digital TV revolution coming to an end in the early 2000’s, I found myself in a dead-end job down in Brighton. With no clear way to get back into television production, and needing a job that paid fairly well, I turned to something I’d had a fascination with since I was a teenager – Bus driving.

I’ve always been interested in transport in one form or another. My Dad was (and still is) very keen on transport and so as a child I spent a lot of time at heritage railway lines, vehicle rallies and museums. My earliest memories are of holidays or day trips to Blackpool and falling in love with the trams there. They were a novelty these massive green and cream machines clanking and purring along the track on the sea front and I was hooked. Their ornate ceilings, wood paneling and plush, comfortable yet tired padded seats spoke of a more opulent time of travel. The drivers had mysterious brass handles and a large wheel in their cramped, narrow cabs and the younger me had so many questions: How do you drive a tram? Why does Blackpool seem to be the only place that has them? Why are there different designs? How old are they, and how do they keep them running? From about the age of 5, I became a bit obsessed with trams, if I’m honest! In the days before the internet the only way I could learn the answers to my questions was by standing on tiptoes looking into the driver's cab of these magnificent machines or timidly asking the crew lots of questions whenever the opportunity arose!

I was born in Bury, Lancashire, but my formative teenage years were spent in Burnley where travelling to school by bus only added to this fascination with transport. The questions flooded into my mind again about how they worked, and names like “Bristol VR”, “Volvo B10M” and “Leyland Olympian” entered my vocabulary. I was old enough to read by this point and voraciously absorbed any books about buses that I could find. I was 10 when the National Bus company was dissolved and I would while away the hours during school holidays seeing how many different coloured vehicles I could spot as previously nationalised companies became private ventures and, ultimately, got swallowed by giants such as Stagecoach.

I found my niche in bus driving in 2003, and I loved it. For 14 happy years I worked for a few different companies in a variety of roles, but it was a chance meeting back in 2004 that would lead to me joining the Tracing the Rails team almost 20 years later. I was a driver trainer. A rather lost-looking new driver (who I later discovered was called Chris Kirk) came up to me in the canteen and asked me which route the service 46 took around Southwick. I told him, and we chatted a bit over a bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee and discovered that we both had a lot in common; we were interested in Science-fiction, (especially Dr. Who), had both previously worked in creative media as well as having more than a passing interest in trains. The years passed and, when Chris asked if I’d be interested in taking part in his new venture called “Tracing the Rails” I accepted without a thought.

Voluntary work, usually in the heritage transport sector, has usually kept me busy away from the day job. Even before I was a bus driver, I joined Amberley Museum in Sussex as a volunteer bus conductor and it was there I first met a young trainee called Catherine Pope, who is now the Tracing the Rails Production Supervisor (and will soon be my wife!) My love of Blackpool trams never abated and, in 2015 whilst living back in the North of England, I applied to work for the charity “Blackpool Heritage Tram Tours” who were the custodians of the old trams I knew from childhood. Starting as a conductor and working my way up to driver, I felt incredibly proud to know that little boy who once stood on tiptoes watching tram drivers with wide eyes trying to figure out the controls now not only had answers to his questions, but was licensed to drive the trams he fell in love with over 20 years previously.

All good things must come to an end, though. The COVID lockdown of 2020 had me stuck at home and frustrated, so I invested in some audio equipment and trained as a voice-over artist, ultimately leading to my recording several audio books for Audible as well as running my own radio show (about my other passion - Music from Film and Television) on the community radio station “Liskeard Radio”. I was no stranger to presenting, both to camera and for radio, so being a part of Tracing the Rails was really a very lucky break for me. I get to hang out with my friends and make a television programme talking about things I’m passionate about! I really hope that some of that passion rubs off on the viewer and inspires people to take a closer look at the world around them and appreciate some of the first hand historical clues which is still there.

Tracing the Rails is, for me, about stories. The railways that helped shape this country are a sum of stories, most of which will sadly never be told. Books about closed railways lines tend to focus on what has been lost from a technical standpoint; “This is an Ivatt Class 2, 2-2-6-2 tank locomotive which worked on the line”, etc, but they don’t tell stories about the people who drove them, what it was like to travel on the train, or live and work in the vicinity of a railway which has now gone. Collecting those first-hand accounts of life around the Steyning line is magical, and it is an absolute credit to the local communities who have got involved with their stories, memories and artifacts from the time of the trains.

I’m incredibly grateful and humbled to be working with such a talented and devoted group of people on this fantastic project, and I hope that by giving a voice to stories that may otherwise have been lost to time we can preserve the railway for those who knew it, and remind those who never even knew of its existence what we’ve lost.

"We do not remember days, we remember moments” - Cesare Pavese