so we have definitely been here before we have indeed the amesbury and military
camp light railway one of the first vlogs that we did on this channel four
years ago blimey was from this location now ever since that time four years ago
there's been one aspect of this light railway that's been bugging me ever since
literally four years and it's just up ahead where the railway starts bit of a mystery
so i definitely don't want to sort of remake old videos on the channel that's completely
not the point because people can still go back and watch these sort of videos can't
they yes oh god this is like a super lovely little bench in the middle of nowhere oh my
god it's hot isn't it it's a bit warm today should we just carry on walking shall we
so let's give this some context this little branch line has been eating away at me for four years
more specifically its junction with the main line the west of england mainland in fact now our
branch line headed away from this and went on to amesbury as his name suggests it went even further
onto the bulford camp rollston campaign at balloon camp at stonehenge so why exactly has the junction
of the amesbury military camp like railway been bugging me for four years well we're almost there
now so let's have a look whilst rebecca does some funky cinematography just to our left you
can see the start of the branch line you can see the embankment that went through this field very
overgrown at the moment that field of left fallow and but you can still see it quite clearly and one
interesting thing when we started the video back at the um the sort of the covering there massive
cutting wasn't there it was really deep yeah for a light railway the amesbury and military camp
light railway really did sort of make its scar on the landscape not often the case sometimes a lot
of light railways we've seen before they don't and they're really difficult to sort of trace
are they right we're nearly at amesbury junction this is cool so there's an active railway ahead of
us the sales bring and over main line the west of england main line london waterloo to exeter
asb junction is where we're heading where the ancient branch line joined that main line
so remember i said to you they built the line in 1901 the branch line it
joined the main line behind us here and only did so in one direction
now a year later reports suggest that they actually connected it in the other direction
too but what that meant was if you look at the old maps it looks like there is a tunnel underneath
the main line so it can join the direction of travel towards salisbury they had two directions
of travel thereafter i find that really strange and we could never ever find any evidence of
that when we came before but we didn't really look properly we didn't have the same sort of resources
so today's journey is to see if they did actually bury a tunnel under the main line here so
they could connect the ancient branch facing salisbury but first of all before we do that
it says there's some old railway cottages on the map and that little bit of wood there so i'm just
gonna have a poke in there first of all and then we'll get down to see if we can see the tunnel
okay the old map is quite difficult to ascertain exactly where the railway
cottages were i can't cross that fence just there because that's the main line
um straight down an embankment onto the main line clearly but i can't see any evidence of
the cottages here whatsoever i'm going to abandon this um cottage hunt and crack on with the tunnel
also don't want to go about roman roads in a railway video but right now alongside
the railway went to roman road you can see it or not but um right there highly likely
that is a remnant of a 2000 year old agger the top bit of roman road way along here
uh the port way between sort of london down to salisbury right there back to railways sorry
we got rebecca we got so we're going to give up on the cottages i was just showing the lovely viewers
the roman road which is to our right just there look gorgeous ass can't go anywhere
without a roman road i can't go anywhere without a roman road but that's fine because
you know while exploring today for the first time i think ever paul has done a small rip
in his shirt just a small one that that's why i'm wearing jeans on a day that's 27 degrees
right so we're here you can just about see on the other side where the line went
down and towards under oh hold on um why don't you just do a map overlay it's gonna
be much clearer for everybody yeah good cool so the 1902 amendment to this junction which
looks like it goes under the railway on at least two maps they certainly indicate it went to both
sides we're heading now down towards the crux of where that's going to be so we'll find out if we
can see anything to suggest it did go under the railway because it's two bushing two tree liners
two tree two two trees you can't get over there you might be wondering while i'm screaming how
come you can't get over there even if you could find a way around the biggest issue we've got and
the reason why there's no drone shots is because 20 yards across the railway there is port and down
all right let's give some geographical context i'm going to use a specific map an old map because it
depicts the embankments and the cuttings really nicely what is ahead of us now i believe is the
alignment if you're going from salisbury that way to amesbury so you branch off down here
that's flat right yep sorry that fits now in this um plaster junction here well obviously not gonna
cross because it's the railway just down there by those sleepers it dips off hugely for seemingly
no reason and i'm wondering if that is x marks a spot on the diagram one of that is there and the
start of the tunnel underneath the railway because it would have to been a small tunnel to cross the
railway a diagonal would have been just down here i don't know how much we're going to see this now
if i've got all of that right we're now walking on the railway we're walking on the railway that went
off to all dangers down in the dip there that is a massive dip is a big dip that's good news
right it's a big dip down there so we're almost certain down there would have been the railway
like the key and the crux of all of this is 10 foot that way
beyond that network rail fence we can't climb it we're not going to climb it do we know anybody at
network rail maybe network rail south west we just want to get over there just to see
if it was an alignment that went underneath the main railway can we get down there we can't whoa
whoa whoa stop waffling paul you're getting nowhere now when i was editing this video
and i was doing a bit more research i posted a few things on social media and a lot of you
came back and said paul you're a complete idiot why haven't you bought that book yet well we did
buy that book of course turn up in a post a day later and we turned to page 12 and mystery solved
page 12 on screen now now when you look at page 12 because this beautiful picture of the steam
engine heading under the line heading towards swordsman but sadly don't look like a tunnel
looks just like an over bridge but it's carrying the main line over the top bit disappointing
we thought there'd be much more of a bit of engineering involved with that and we'd find
a good old tunnel underneath there but at least we have got to the bottom of this mystery now the
next question is why did we make a video about this when we could have just ordered the book
well let's get back to paul and rebecca who don't know the mystery sold yet to tell you exactly why
see only a short video today but these are those things that get stuck in my head
and i feel like i need to get them out i feel like some kind of therapy for me to uh
get this off my chest does that make all of the people watching your therapists totally
yeah i mean yeah i need to offload some of the stupid things in my head
for the last four years i've been trying to get that little mystery out of my head
i am almost positive now that there would have been a tunnel under there
looking at the landscape properly looking over the railway from the other side it all fits perfectly
so yeah thanks for listening to me everybody it's been really appreciated so not wishing to mock
anybody that does have therapy i probably need it myself um people do yeah right onwards we'll
see you next week thanks for watching i've been paul, i've been rebecca, we'll see you next time
you