When tele­vi­sion broad­cast­er Huell Hows­er passed away last month, we South­ern Cal­i­for­ni­ans real­ized just how far his per­sona reached. The cliché “larg­er than life” seems, in this light, almost apt; it describes his famous­ly vol­u­ble enthu­si­asm, larg­er than the broad­ly local life he explored on cam­era. Though fol­low­ers iden­ti­fy Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gold as Howser’s flag­ship series, he host­ed spe­cial­ized ones as well, such as Down­town, focus­ing on Los Ange­les’ his­toric core, Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Mis­sions (sub­ject obvi­ous), and Road Trip, which took him far­ther afield. Above, you’ll find an episode of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gold shot in Palm Springs. Hows­er hap­pened to own a home out there, but more to the point, so did Frank Sina­tra; it’s the Chair­man of the Board­’s house that Hows­er devotes his con­sid­er­able curios­i­ty to walk­ing through and find­ing out every­thing about. Below, you can join him for a look at Vin­cent Price’s art col­lec­tion on a Vis­it­ing… broad­cast that con­tains an inter­view Hows­er record­ed with Price back in the eight­ies.

“I don’t have an agent,” said Hows­er in a 2009 Los Ange­les Times pro­file. “I don’t have a man­ag­er, I don’t have a press agent, I don’t have a wardrobe guy, a make­up guy, a park­ing space, a dress­ing room. It’s basi­cal­ly me and a cam­era­man and an edi­tor and a cou­ple of guys in the office. I can go out between now and noon and do a full 30-minute show just talk­ing to peo­ple on the street and have it on the air tonight.” You can watch all these shows on Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty’s new Huell Hows­er Archive; just click on a series title under the “Shows” col­umn, then through to each episode’s indi­vid­ual post. For a pub­lic tele­vi­sion icon, Hows­er had a pro­duc­tion sen­si­bil­i­ty ide­al­ly suit­ed for the inter­net, domain of the cheap and cheer­ful — well, domain of the cheap, any­way. “We have shrugged our way into a world where every­one is sup­posed to be a crit­ic of every­thing, all the time,” actor Thomas Lennon wrote in a remem­brance titled “Why Huell Hows­er Was the Oppo­site of the Inter­net.” “Huell, on the oth­er hand, would get into his car, dri­ve for hours, and show us things… just so he could tell us how won­der­ful they were.”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

What is it with Britons and trains, any­way? Hard­ly just the title of col­lec­tion of Irvine Welsh’s sto­ries of hero­in and degra­da­tion, the term “trainspot­ting” actu­al­ly refers to a real, and fer­vent­ly pur­sued hob­by; trainspot­ters exist, just as do bird­watch­ers and sports fans. In terms of obses­sion with the design and oper­a­tional minu­ti­ae of their own trains, Britain falls sec­ond only to the even more dense­ly rail-laden Japan. But we Amer­i­cans, pos­sessed of a train sys­tem few would call robust, can’t quite bring our­selves to believe it. Per­haps we just need to hear it from the mouth of Michael Palin, writer, come­di­an, tele­vi­sion host, Python — and avowed trainspot­ter. Most of Pal­in’s fans know him first through his char­ac­ters in the Fly­ing Cir­cus: the shop­keep­er, Lui­gi Ver­cot­ti, Ken Shab­by, and the most mem­o­rable Gum­bys, to name but a few. But some of us know him best as the cen­tral trav­el­er of the globe-span­ning tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries in which he’s starred since 1989. Around the World in Eighty Days, Pole to Pole, Full Cir­cle, Michael Pal­in’s Hem­ing­way Adven­ture, Sahara, Himalaya, New Europe, and now Brazil with Michael Palin. Here we have a man who knows how best to get from point A to point Z, and all in between.

But before all of those shows came Pal­in’s first episode of the BBC’s Great Rail­way Jour­neys, a long-run­ning series whose very exis­tence speaks to the vital­i­ty of Britain’s train-relat­ed enthu­si­asm. 1980’s “Con­fes­sions of a Trainspot­ter”, view­able at the top of this post, fol­lows Palin as he makes his glee­ful way from Lon­don to Kyle of Lochalsh in north­west­ern Scot­land on a series of trains fast and slow, long and short, old and new. This estab­lished him as a tele­vi­sion trav­el­er; four­teen years lat­er, he returned to the pro­gram for “Der­ry to Ker­ry”, where he traced his roots along “that best-kept of all trans­port secrets, the Irish rail­way line.” “Is it just us who are like this?” Palin asks. “The British, I mean. Are there any trainspot­ters in Sici­ly? Do Bel­gians go misty-eyed with the thought of see­ing the 12:16 to Antwerp? Do Swedes save up all year for a Has­sel­blad to pho­to­graph a Stock­holm to Gothen­burg coal train crest­ing a 1‑in-57 gra­di­ent?” Per­haps the most defin­i­tive answer comes from a fel­low rail fan he meets mere min­utes lat­er. Palin asks the man if he has always loved trains. “Very near­ly,” he replies. “There was a short peri­od when I became inter­est­ed in girls. Even­tu­al­ly, I got mar­ried and went back to rail­ways.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Amer­i­ca Needs More Palin … Michael Palin, That Is

An Epic Jour­ney on the Trans-Siber­ian Rail­road

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.