We are outside!! outside oh god this is good
i'm right here welcome to another video everybody welcome to
an Every Disused Station where we go and visit
abandoned stations and infrastructure and
architecture and stuff from the oldie days
my name is paul and this is rebecca
today we are looking at the devizes branch line
which tells an interesting story and we always try and tell an interesting story
first of all before we get to the story we're looking at we're going to take off
a few abandoned stations from on live railways
before we get to the devizes branch i'll just tick off a couple on our journey
um but we are gonna climb up a big hill first
and um give you a really good advantage point over the Pewsey Vale
where you can see a lot of the lines
it's probably not windy up here but what we really wanted to do is
show you how the um or where our journey starts at wooden rivers Halt
and snakes its way through the pewsey vale before we take the branch
off two devizes
manningford so this is our second stop of the day
um we think the station was down there not a train coming for about half an
hour but our next stop is woodborough so we've
gone past pewsey which is obviously an active station manning ford and then
woodborough next
oh i'm in a bush this time
so
right so that was woodborough interesting we're now walking through
on a pathway obviously it looks like someone's back garden and sort of
homemade golf course it's very funky it's really funky isn't
it i mean this is if i had a little bit of land
what would this golf course there's only one hole i've been wondering what to do
with our Garden. right wood protect onwards two
okay so that is us we ticked off now all the
stations that were along this line in terms of the abandoned section of the
live line we're now going to take the uh branch off towards devizes first up
pans lane halt uh yep which is in devices isn't it
basically so i guess so yeah opened in 1929
and closed when the line closed um that's our next stop now we're going to
start talking about the actual devices branch on which is the main point in
this video.
welcome to devizes car park and this is devizes car parking you can tell run
an old station because it's called station road yes
station road car park and station road yeah so the car park sits on an
embankment which goes down there because the whole
town is very um sloped um this side of the town we are
on the um east side of town and the whole of
this car park is the site of a massive station well not a
massive station but certainly massive for the the town that
is devizes um sweet all around to the left there
had a good yard all over the side big old shed i think the station was
almost right here and ahead of us is the old tunnel so
we're not going to make any feature about the tunnel as such
because you can't get in it one side is blocked off
um under the castle and the other side is now
home of the rangers wiltshire shooting
branch watch your shooting range and there it is um lovely home
yeah almost like castle like in fact yeah got a house sat
right above it yep which looks reasonably old
um lovely that's quite amazing yeah so this is a tick for um devizes station
and devizes tunnel which goes right under these devizes
hello so you join us next to the um lovely
Kennet and Avon canal
yeah and we've just come down huge um hill where cane hill locks are and that
tells you the story that obviously devizes is well that's not high relative
to a lot of other towns it's high um in terms of it's on its own
it's sort of prominently high it's 110 120 meters at least high
above sea level that tells you the story of
the trouble they have with building a line here because there's a line they
wanted to come through it's only gwr i think late 30s but it took another um
sort of 15 20 years for them to actually build the line through there
on account that it was geographically very difficult to get through
hence why they needed a tunnel under the castle for a period of time
they used the devizes branch as part of a route between london and plymouth so
it was part of the main line and that didn't last long
owing to the curves the gradients involved to get through devizes
so devizes didn't have much of a chance when it came to the beeching cut
so 1966 it was closed and it was no longer
because there are alternative routes certainly down to um from partly bridge
i think down to Westburywhich is still now
i'm obviously in use yeah so now we're at the bottom of cean hill locks
and we're looking for what we're looking for better broom....
Bromhan and Rowde road halt we think it was a halt again
we've got a bit of a pathway to get down and um
so it feels like the first time since last summer that we've been doing a
tricky pathway
right so we're very close now too which is a bit wet underfoot
very close to a little underpass where we think near the old halt was
so we might get fairly close not 100%
sure
right you're joining us very close to seend and you're joining us on
if you can see behind us you join us and in front of us
is um an embankment and it is an embankment that used to
house the seend ironworks tramway built in 1857
a year later they built the station 1857 1858 they built scene station
probably um in this location to serve the ironworks because it was quite
productive for a period of time and they found a
great bit of iron stone they could um try and uh smelt and thereafter and ship
around the country uh that we'll tell that story in another
day but this is a lovely little curved embankment
um just to the south side of the um devizes branch just by the station
i don't know how close we're going to get to the actual station Seend
station um but it was along with devizes one of
the longest serving open stations 109 years i think it
lasted until 66 when it was closed there was
a bridge going over the station scene until the last few years when there's a
lot of accidents on the bridge because it was a tight curve
and they replaced it and they took well they didn't even place it they took it
away completely and um it's just a flat you know road
now going over the the track bed
right so as close as we're going to get to seemed
because we don't want to serve those cows because signs i'm saying please
don't deserve the cows because you've got calves
i've seen you look scary they do it um they're just through that gate there
seemed where it was we're pretty sure there's nothing there now because it's
been obliterated by an old yard um but this is a lovely
curved shallow embankment leading up to the
ironworks we might do another video on that because there's supposed to be an
old tunnel so keep keep tuned um this has been the end
of every disu station um sevington was a driver the last stop
on the on the line i hope you've enjoyed our first trip out
in quite a while hey and it's been gorgeous gorgeous
weather some nice pictures yeah um it told the story of a branch
line that was essentially serving a town that was too
high and therefore didn't last through the beach and cuts
yeah wonderful thanks for watching hope you've enjoyed it stay tuned and stay
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