Michael Portillo: Europe's railways offer a window on to the past

Travelling by train with a century-old guidebook has been a wonderful way for me to learn about the political, cultural and social history of our continent

In Austria, the Schafbergbahn leads to Europe's highest station, at Jungfraujoch (Getty)

Bradshaw's guidebooks provide a deep insight into Britain's state of mind in the year of their publication. The guide to the United Kingdom from the 1860s (which I use in the BBC television series Great British Railway Journeys) reveals a nation at the peak of self-confidence. The British Empire is the largest ever seen and, at its heart, London is the world's first metropolis. But by 1913, the mood has changed markedly. The Bradshaw's Continental Guide of that year reveals a loss of self-assurance. Germany leads in engineering and scientific research. France dominates new industries. War approaches.

The Europe of Bradshaw's has enjoyed decades of peace, but the old Europe of empires – Tsarist, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman – will be swept away by war. Travelling by train with a century-old guidebook has been, for me at least, a wonderful way to learn about the political, cultural and social history of our continent.

The Great Continental Railway Journeys programmes are full of joy too. We celebrate the eccentricities of nations as we build castells (“people steeples”) in Catalonia. I battled a huge mechanical dragon in Germany, and impersonated a ski jumper on a zipwire in Norway. I have been beaten with birch in a Russian bathhouse, heated to melting point in a Swedish sauna, and tumbled from a toboggan in Austria.

There have been some great railways to admire: the Schafbergbahn, which is powered by a steam locomotive, the first trans-Alpine line through Austria's Semmering Pass, and the tracks that hug the river banks of Portugal's Douro valley.

You can read history in railways. In what was known in 1913 as the Holy Land, there was a railway for Christian pilgrims from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and one for Muslim pilgrims from Haifa towards Medina and Mecca. But the British feared that line posed a military threat to India and Egypt so, during the Great War, Lawrence of Arabia blew it up.

I like to give a potted history of Russia with three rail stories. Leo Tolstoy, the novelist who championed the peasants at a time of revolutionary sentiment, died in a station in 1910. Then, after the 1917 March Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II signed his abdication in a railway carriage. And Germany decided to allow Vladimir Lenin to cross its territory in a sealed train, like a revolutionary virus, to foment the Bolshevik uprising that October, and knock Russia out of the war. It must be the most significant train journey of all time.

Most of our lives are now untroubled by war, but I filmed in Russia while Ukrainians were dying and there are Mediterranean countries in Bradshaw's that are presently off-limits because of war or terror. We are what we are thanks to both geniuses and tyrants, because of both virtue and evil. Most of us are very lucky to live in our magnificent continent in the times that we do.

This is an edited extract from 'Great Continental Railway Journeys' (Simon and Schuster, £20) accompanying the BBC2 TV programme on Fridays at 9pm