Camera rolling, get that collar straight Geoff.
(Geoff clears his throat)
(claps hands)
That's not for sound syncing,
that's just to warm my hands up.
There's a chilly breeze blowing in,
off the English channel, I've spent a couple of amazing,
incredible days, here in the channel islands, on Alderney.
I'm standing on the platform of Braye road station.
This is the terminus, but I thought as a bit of fun,
doing a bit of a parody of my own,
London's Lost Railway series,
I realised, when I looked in that direction,
beyond the station, the rails continued.
I did a little bit of research,
asked the volunteers that worked here
and discovered that there's an abandoned section
of the railway here, on Alderney.
So it's time to do, "Lost Railways of Alderney", I guess?
So here's the map of the railway
that we had in the main video,
with trains terminating at Braye road.
But here, is where the tracks appear to go.
They extend further out,
onto the straight and narrow breakwater,
which is what the railway was set up to build
in the first place, with stone from the quarry.
Let's follow the tracks.
Yeah, so the main reason that the railway here,
on Alderney, was built,
was to get rock from the quarry,
down to here, at the harbour at Braye,
to build the breakwater.
The Breakwater is this impressive feature that comes out,
enables the boats to come in and get a bit of protection
from the main waters.
And that's what they did,
they built the railway to bring the stone down
and they literally, brought the trains to the edge
and sort of just dumped the rocks down into the water
and then built it that way.
And then slowly, I think, I've got to find out,
built the rails out, into the sea.
So I'm just going to see how far these rails go.
(footsteps crunching)
Definitely rails there.
Rails, rails, rails, there's some things coming up though,
which looked like an obstruction.
So we've lost the tracks to some parked cars, here.
It would be in there, but I can see, coming up,
the tracks definitely pick up again.
I'm going to hate to break it to you though,
allotment fans,
I haven't seen any allotments on Alderney, sorry.
Right, we've got two sets of tracks going on,
one there, one here.
This might be the only point on the Alderney railway
where it was a double track.
Still heading for the breakwater.
I've crouched down to avoid the wind.
I found this slightly scary message,
States of Guernsey, Alderney Breakwater, Public Notice.
All persons are warned, that this breakwater,
is liable to sudden swamping by breaking waves.
We accept no liability for any loss, injury or damage,
however caused, all motor vehicles or cycles are prohibited
except on official business.
It's slightly windy now,
I've heard stories from the people I've spoken to here
that sometimes during the storm,
the waves will crash in and go like a hundred foot
high in the air.
I have to see if I can dig out some archive photos of that,
but, I can see already there's like a high level
and a low level.
And I want to walk on the low level
to be protected from the wind.
But I have this sneaking suspicion
that the rails are on the high level of the breakwater.
And I don't know if I want to walk up there
because it's quite windy.
Yeah, the tracks there are definitely going up
on the high level, I'm gonna play it safe
and walk low level.
But I will walk out to the end.
While I do that, so when I was chatting to Ken,
the volunteer, the other day,
he told me about an unfortunate time
that a train went a little bit too far on the breakwater
and there's no buffers.
(metal door sliding)
The railway was used to run the break,
to build the breakwater, yeah?
They started it in 1854 and completed it in 1872.
1911, there was the classic example of the loco
taking trucks full, down onto the breakwater
to reinforce the breakwater
and the night before, there'd been a heavy storm
and seaweed had blown up, onto the top of it.
They put the brakes on and it didn't brake,
it just went straight off the end of the breakwater.
The two drivers jumped out, swam ashore.
Following week, they used a crane
and craned the engine back up, put it back on the rails,
towed it back to the depot, which was down that area anyway,
hosed it down, put a new chimney on top
and it was back up working, 10, 15 days later.
That is a brilliant story.
(Geoff chuckling)
I stuck to the low level
of the Breakwater, but at frequent points,
there were steps up to the high level.
So I braved the wind,
I've said wind quite a lot in this video,
to take a look and oh look, there are, rusty tracks.
Okay, it's windy, it's magnificent.
The sun is setting in the distance over there.
I think there's a sheer drop, down to my right
that just goes into the English channel.
So I'm not going to get too near that edge,
but look at the rails, just going down, down.
At the moment, as far as I can see, all the way to the end
of the breakwater,
so I'm gonna walk back down the steps, out to the end,
at the lower level, where there's less wind.
Except that the wind, picked up,
the Breakwater was long and with light fading,
I suddenly felt very unsafe, being out there alone,
all by myself, which means...
And it is the next morning,
because what happen last night,
is that the light was fading
and the wind was picking up
and I felt uncomfortable walking all the way out there
on the breakwater.
So I've come back this morning
and the wind hasn't dropped at all.
If anything, it's picked up even more,
the sea is really choppy,
there's probably wind against the mic,
but it's just an amazing thing to see.
However, I've been speaking to the lovely Mark
at the local supermarket, hello mate
and he tells me that the tracks,
apart from the gap in the middle
do go all the way out to the end.
So it goes right out to the end,
to that point where the train did indeed slip off the end
and fall into the sea and they recovered it.
So, the rusty tracks are still there today.
So if you do find yourself in Alderney,
visiting the railway,
hope for a nice day of sunny, warm, windless weather
and you can take the long walk out to the Breakwater.
Thank you Alderney, thank you for the railway
and thank you to everyone, that I've met
and thoroughly enjoyed, with my time here.
It's been slightly emotional
and I kind of don't want to leave,
but I have to go back to England
and to London and to where, the real London Underground is.
See ya!
(wind blowing)
(waves crashing)