good morning everybody welcome to... where are we today? We're in Taunton at the
moment. welcome to Somerset yeah today we're
looking at the chard branch lines only one line but is it branch look you'll
get the idea when we tell you the story of the chard Branch but before we do
that a quick couple of notices so number one if you haven't already subscribe to
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River tone I think the tone goes past Taunton
first up, of the day today is a bridge five arch bridge I think it's called
which makes sense because I can see five arches just ahead of us we're going to
try and tell you an interesting story today about chard and the line that went
to Chard from different directions but we're start from the north end to a
working south toward chard so we'll tell you that story as we walk along the line
in various sections right the first top five arced bridge.
Right so you can't get across it but that is five arch but how do you reckon
they came up their name five oh I don't know they must have been sat for agesr
we should call it Six arch, five arches. Right so five Arched Bridge first
of many pieces of architecture along as railway built 1866 in part of another
video shall be that bridge over there which is not a bridge its an aqueducts
because it carried an old canal which predated the railway obviously which
ended just across away over there and joined onto another canal.
under the name of we will come to that under the video obviously anyway back to
this railway how cool is that embankment people you know I love me embankments
right so this is ash bridge well there is two, so
that's ash bridge anyway there's two wonderful bridges here which is lovely
this one's a footpath that is really green isn't it. Its mossy I think
so where we've been so far we have but we started up at the five arch bridges
we didn't do aqueduct bridge which we didn't have to do cos no longer there
then we had a Station called Thorn Falcom.
Thorne Falcon then it changed its name to thorne. I thought it was
the other way around and then it's gone back to Thorn Falcon.
So this line was built in 1866 by Bristol and Exeter railway company. They took
over I think a smaller company.
and they built the third station for chard in 1866 we'll
come to that history in a bit more because that's where it gets a bit quirky
in a bit interesting but for the time being we're gonna carry on down the line
that way next up is probably gonna be a station or two because now we get to
all the Disused Stations
This is hatch, hatch Beauchamp boosha boosha Beauchamp Beauchamp Beauchamp
hatch Beauchamp has a tunnel there which is way down there which we're gonna get
to miss. It has all new fences so we're gonna have a look for the old area where the
station was instead.
okay not the best start of the day it's well, its almost lunchtime
so now we've arrived at you illston
whichh was a halt built in 1928 I was just up on the
embankment we don't there's anything left so it was like a wooden
no concrete platform concrete but a wooden shelter right and a pillbox on
the north end yeah now that in terms of pillbox this line is covered in pill
boxes and anti-tank devices like a blocks and stuff like there's a big long
line of defense, I think it was nicknamed the stop line
he could have been because of that so in other words anti-tank to stop tanks I
guess
well isn't this just wonderful how cause this this is what we always love people
community have come together and done this and it's got everything information
board it's got a Rebecca got a little shelter it's got information or you read
Rebecca anything exciting I'm just thinking about there's a 9-pound of gun
emplacement behind the halt literally behind ya, they're above us we've got
the whole anti and tank blocks anti-tank cubes their content cubes ready for
German invasion yes there was a six foot deep
12 foot wide anti-tank ditch just there. Gonna do Rebecca feet
Rebecca feet instead of Vicky's feet on the platform I have massive boots on
we will factor that. We're gonna do Vicky's feet.
You do the top yeah from the flat bit because you shouldn't
really go down a bit.
counting down don't lose count.
how many feet how many feet eighty nine and three-quarters
okay so you got big boots on a little bit let's say a hundred roughly a
100 feet. Donyatt Halt opened in 1928 We are just doing a little
bit of track bed walking, we thought a good time to discuss some of
features. Track talk, so this line built
1866 was and built to go down to chard that station down child was built
1866 it was the third station third it served chard. The first station that
served chard was Chard Road and often the station's called "Road"
weren't actually in the town they were. Chard Road, Andover Road for example, first
station for Andover was eight miles away and Chard Road
was not in chard it was back down on the main line the West of England main line
the one that went from Exeter to Salisbury and basically at that point
around 1860 they were already building or to try to build the start of the
chard branch from the South not this line they were build London South
Western Railway were building the branch up which I believe opened in 1863 and
then they built Chard Town so that was the first station IN chard and the
second station that served chard so then at that point
soon after this line was being built 1866 and they opened chard joint and the
reason became chard joint is because London South Western Railway then joined
their line on up into chard that makes sense for joint and they shared
the station for a while so because Chard town went off at an
angle and they built that shoot around the station that were coming from the
South London South Western Railway trains
up to towards joint and also stops at the town so when into the town station they
reversed back out which is obviously where Tesco's is and then back up the
chard joint, so if you're a passenger you heading north, not only we did the train stop-in chard town but it was also
then went backwards back up back up then you'd have to change trains and get on a
GWR train and go north and so that's the the relatively sketchy history of chard
and the reason why it's hard had three stations
So we went to Tesco's, Tesco's is not very exciting as the ex railway stations go
really but that was obviously the London sent Western Railway built in 1863 so
three years later Bristol and Exeter put an extra railway built the line 1866
down here and just across the way there which the station still stands is
Chard Central then it became joint when then the South Western
Railway built their loop-de-loop line up to here and bizarrely yeah they
ran trains into town back out back around the new up to joint.
Change again to carry on up the line on do what would be GWRs territory so
they did seem to get on very well here. GWR and LSWR.
Yeah that is the end of our journey the end of the adventure.
join us next time.