so this is a charnwood forest railway that sounds pretty but it's not the subject of today's video
we're only here for a very short time as we head that way to tell a story of a really early railway
with some very quirky features you like quirky i like quirky this is the grace dieu,
grace dieu viaduct i know i had no idea how does that the grace dieu it's written down here yeah
which is lovely and i figured it would be a lot better in the winter when you can actually see it
yeah it's a bit overgrown at the moment yeah but we need to head that way okay
so we managed to find our way down to the bottom of the violet and actually it doesn't need to be
winter does it to see it it's very beautiful yeah it's just more at the top i think big trees yeah
it's lovely wonderful so we're heading to our west of here and we're heading towards the swannington
and leicester railway now in the early 1800s there was a huge rivalry between the coal masters of the
time between leicestershire and nottinghamshire and that railway in particular tells that story
so well with a number of quirky different aspects to it so join us as we head towards leicester
so third and final stop on the charmwood forest railway is something that's potentially a little
bit um i think special to us is that the right word yeah kind of whitwick
it's not whitwick it is if you spell it it looks like
i think it's pronounced wittick same as the w-i-g-h-t so it's got a similar surname to
us it's whitick in leicestershire and it's very beautiful it's right in front of us
okay there is whittick station now uses a local heritage and history centre which is
kind of ironic because they do genealogy and our surname is similar right we're still on the track
bed but we're not we're about three feet of the track bed because the platform would have
been here where the grass is now and we're now going to head on that way to today's main event
so the nottinghamshire and the leicestershire coal
rivalry while nottinghamshire in the early 1800s always had the advantage
why because they had access to a canal network so they could ship their coal wherever they
wanted to fairly easily and fairly economically leicestershire however didn't and they were stuck
in the rut let's say the horse and car and you can imagine the differences between those
two methods of transport muddy trackways in the winter or a nice smooth but slow canal
one such coal master was that of william stenson he sunk a pit just down the road here in long lane
and found coal in 1820 thus the birth of the town coalville
but he still had the issue of moving his coal now stenson had seen the success of george stevenson
on the stockton and darlington railway and he was now building the liverpool
and manchester railway both carrying passengers
which was quite unheard of stenson wanted a piece of this railway action for himself
william stenson managed to raise sixty thousand pounds in the first meeting about this railway
now george stevenson was obviously very keen because he raised another forty thousand pounds
eighteen thirty royal ascent is given now this is only the fifth railway of its type to be given
that royal ascent 1832 all is set to go george stevenson himself drives a train called the
comet out of leicester up the line into the glenfield tunnel now the glenfield tunnel
has been over ballasted the track bed's a bit too high
subsequently the chimney stack ends up hitting the top of the tunnel and collapsing
so stevenson carried on going through the glenfield tunnel probably between
15 25 miles an hour unperturbed by the loss of his chimney stack and it came across along here
across the rothery brook now you can imagine after going through the whole of the glenfield tunnel
the state of the passengers they were covered in soot so the train stopped around here somewhere
the passengers were able to clean themselves off in the brook on that inaugural railway journey
so we're just walking underneath the church lane bridge which i think was rebuilt in i
think it's in 1994 1994 we're heading up the swannington incline so we're heading sort of back
south again now for me this is a hugely exciting period of history and there was no formulation
for building railways like this and especially no formulation for how to carry a passenger
which were often a second thought to the railroad engineers at the time if we didn't have any
forethought that there would be a demand but there was so the early railway pioneers at that time
often treated their railway like they did a canal so a good example of that is also the cromford and
high peak railway built i think about two years prior to this one and they treat it like a canal
in respect of they didn't know how to tackle uh gradients so they would do a canal section
which you would call it is exactly flat then they would have an incline and then flat and
then incline that's how they tackled hills rather than a slow gradient and this is a great example
we're walking up now the swarmington incline and it's 1 in 17 it's one of two on this line
just up there you can also see what was an ancient trackway called pitlay's lane and they changed the
name to potato lane potato lane and i guess that's the kind of i wonder if that's them
just like lost in dialect do you remember um the hockey duck aqueduct we did oh yeah apparently
no one could say the word aqueduct yes so they all just called it hockey duck so i wonder if
that was the kind of thing where it was pete lay's lane got turned into potato lane perhaps
now in order to get trains up those inclines they would use a static engine and that static engine
that used pistons would it still survive today in the national rail museum and there's all sorts
of things up here there's lots of plaques that people have put up or sometimes that's not the
front door and um yeah there's a building just here which is obviously laid out as in terms of
perhaps the way it was back in the railway day who knows i don't know there's there's all sorts here
there's no signs already for this bit product there's a well down there um and all sorts of
engineering bits and pieces we need a local guide or we need to read the sign that's over there
all right so what are we saying rebecca well that used to be the engine house so the whole
building was the engine house massive engine house which was obviously dismantled when everything was
dismantled um it was demolished but the long-term aim of the trust is to rebuild it and restate the
winding engine to into its original place that'd be fantastic that would be an epic wouldn't it
i feel like it's been a quite a while since we stood on some track
some abandoned or disused track i don't remember the last time not a lot in this country is
there but right ahead of us is a beautiful stretch of track going towards spring lane
so this has been the swannington and leicester railway and it's been a really interesting
journey the research behind it as well because it really tells the story of the early railway
and how they had no sort of blueprint no formal blueprint and how they were doing this
they underestimated the demand for passengers and it was led by the industry as it often was
but and yeah turned out to be a successful railway yeah hopefully you've enjoyed this
little jaunt from rebecca and i um if you like the videos we do click on subscribe
we'll see you next week people thanks for watching goodbye
you