(train rumbles)
Today is a special day because it's storytelling time,
although I'm at East Croydon,
and that is not where I need to be to tell my story.
So first of all, we have to get there.
(slot clicks)
(train rumbles)
(button beeps)
(stamp punches)
(motor rumbles)
Okay, made it to the destination.
Now, I have a story to tell you.
(train rumbles)
I made it to Shanklin, all right.
We have a little story to tell, and it seemed appropriate
that when talking about the Isle of Wight,
why not come to the Isle of Wight,
to tell the story about the Isle of Wight?
So this is Shanklin, I do remember coming here,
and I ran down and we only had five minutes back then,
when I got the buffer shot, and Vicki did the,
there's like some kind of plaque outside
about a porter called George or something.
And it's definitely a different experience seeing it
when you're not in a hurry, just trying to go
through all the stations as fast as you can.
So I've got all day on this lovely, quite glorious,
I checked the weather, a sunny,
and not entirely cold winter's January day,
to explore every station along the Island line.
Now part of Southwest railway, Southwest trains are no more,
still called the Island line, but it's running.
As you just saw it's 1938 tube stock.
Yeah, the story of how we never went to the Isle of Wight.
(train rumbles)
I made it to Lake station on foot to continue the next part
of our story, I think we'll sit in this shelter.
So we've never been to the Isle of Wight, why is that?
Because when all the stations started, we released a video,
day nine, that started in Bognor Regis and went up,
and then went along the South coast.
And it was in that video,
there's a link in the corner on the screen now,
if you look in the comments of the Bognor Regis day video,
there's loads of people in there going,
you've not been to the Isle of Wight,
where's the Isle of Wight video?
And some people got very angry and basically accused us
of never having been to the Isle of Wight,
despite the fact that on the day we came
to the Isle of Wight, we were doing a Twitter feed
and we did Facebook feed.
And I did a Periscope video live from the platform
of Smallbrook Junction at the same time
that Vicki was doing a Facebook live video
from the platform of Smallbrook Junction,
we then tweeted pictures of the steam train
and on the catamaran coming over.
We very clearly, if you followed our social media feeds,
went to the Isle of Wight.
It's just that the videos have appeared out of order.
And I'll explain why the videos appeared out
of order in a second.
But the first thing we need to talk about is the funding
for the stations, and that is,
when we did the Kickstarter funding campaign,
we initially went from around 20 something, 25,000 pounds.
We figured that would be enough for hotel accommodation,
tickets, and for two videos a week.
And once we hit that, more quickly than we expected,
we went for stretch goals to maybe do like four
or five videos a week.
So in the end we did the math, we actually had enough
for four videos a week by Will and Dan, plus whatever I did,
and a little bit of extra cash left over
in like the video editor part.
So we realised then at the beginning
that we would have money
to do like the occasional, sporadic bonus video.
And Isle of Wight became a bonus video.
But to explain how that happened, I think we'll do that
at the next stop, which is Sandown.
(train rumbling)
All right, I'm at the delightful Sandown Station,
which on one side is all modern and swayed in sunlight,
with the modern shelter.
And on this side, it's got the proper old shelter
and a delightful old, it says refreshments,
I wanna call it tea room.
This only means one thing, doesn't it?
Cup of tea.
(tea pouring)
So I've moved outside.
You're looking at the timetable, is a very uneven service.
It's not really every hour, it's like every 40 minutes
and every 20 minutes.
If you want to see sort of a historical take and a look
at the rolling stock in detail, and not just my explanation
of the Isle of Wight story,
then check out Andy's video here.
Mr. Calling All Stations does an excellent video on that.
Back to the story though, so the Kickstarter.
(laughing)
Four videos a week, except what happened is
that when we got down to Penzance for the weekend,
we actually got to Penzance on three days,
but we got down there.
We took the sleep on the Thursday night with the intention
of getting in the Friday morning,
spending all weekend in Penzance, sort of resting,
preparing ourselves, and then starting on the Monday.
And we were meant to go to Saint Ives and back,
and then head into Cornwell straight away on the Monday.
But on the way down on the sleeper, I realised,
and I turned to Vicky, I remember I said, I said,
why don't we just do the Saint Ives line at our leisure
on the Sundays?
It kind of way of easing our way into it.
A bit of a soft start.
I liked it because there's this thing with railway stations,
when a new service starts on a Monday,
sometimes they'll open up a station
or the timetable will start on a Sunday.
So it was like, let's go and do Saint Ives on a Sunday.
So that's what we did,
what that meant and what that unfortunately meant.
And this is key to the whole,
you haven't been to the Isle of Wight problem is that,
that then meant the first video.
What's that one, it was just on Saint Ives.
Although we didn't get any video footage,
well not that we used, of Carpets Bay,
but one it kind of laid the intention that we were maybe
going to include every single station in the video.
And also what it meant was that the first video you saw
was edited by me.
So day one was Saint Ives and then day two,
which was the Monday was edited by Will.
And day three edited by Will, was the Tuesday.
Dan did one, he did day four, which was the Wednesday.
And we all do Balmitchell's day five,
which was the Thursday, Friday we then had off.
We had a companion with us and we took some footage,
but we never made a video of that day.
Although video footage does exist.
And then what I realised on that Friday is that the Saturday
is that we then write up sort of the Portsmouth,
the Guilford line and do all around that.
And that became an extra video on my channel.
I'll link that here,
if you've not seen that where my friend Jonno
gives us the run around and then the next day,
because we ended up in Portsmouth with that night,
stayed with my friend, Christen, the next day,
we then did the other way.
We just did the other way when we did the amazing video.
And that was a bonus video.
Emause I remember emailing Dan going,
will you edit that up as like a bonus video?
And we'll just slot that in somewhere else.
And he went sure,
but I won't have it ready until that next Wednesday.
And what happened therefore is that the Bognor Regis video
where we started in Bognor,
came out before the Isle of Wight bonus video came out
and that's why everybody went,
"You haven't been to the Isle of Wight."
Even though we had, it's just, it fell out a sequence.
There's one thing that I admit
that we did do slightly wrong, I admit,
which we then changed based on people's feedback,
but I'll explain that when we get to the next stop,
which I've forgotten embarrassingly, oh, Braiding,
let's go to Braiding.
We're getting into Braiding station.
Braiding station, I happen to know if Nikki were here,
she would tell you that it's quite correct.
Hello Braiding, there's a footbridge
that's no longer in use, some platforms no longer in use.
There's a signal box, that might still be in use.
So I'm on the platform at Braiding.
This does seem like I'm sort of lying flat on the bench.
It's the only way I can get the camera to work,
this does seem like the ideal point
to tell you the last part of the story.
And the reason why everybody got confused
about the Isle of Wight is because something
that we did early on, which we rectified is that we just
numbered the video's day one, day two, day three, day four,
day five, which was the one video that I did
in the four videos where Matt did.
And then it jumped supposedly, in the next video you saw,
I said day eight and the bonus video
for the other one was in between.
And the point is based on feedback,
which you kindly gave this in the YouTube comments,
after that we then numbered,
and remember those first five years,
we then put in the day number and an episode number
in Isle of Wight, it's just a bonus video.
Didn't have an episode number.
So we always talk about how there were 59 episodes,
which I think is if you do the math,
it's like 56 episodes that were edited by Will and Dan,
and three, I did, and then there's like nine,
10, 11, maybe 12 bonus videos,
which the Kickstarter cash also paid for which didn't fit
into the regular sort of numbering series.
But we just kind of did on top, so I'll put a link as well.
It's too many links on there.
I might run out of YouTube links by now.
I'll put a link to the playlist with all the bonus videos,
if you've never seen the bonus videos,
because the main episodes got more views
and hits than the bonus videos.
It's like, people didn't look at the bonus playlist.
So there is a link here to the bonus videos playlist
on all the stations, which you should watch.
So, yeah.
So in summary,
due to the unique way that our project was funded,
Kickstarter, and the fact that not every day was filmed
and we did bonus videos and we forgot
to put in episode numbers rather than just day numbers.
That's why people thought we skipped the Isle of Wight
when we haven't.
I hope that's clear now.
I'm on a bus.
Please hold on, the bus is about to move.
Saved some time by getting a bus and not the train,
if I had waited for the train, I'd have been on this train
and have to get out.
I'm right in John's road as it was.
I've got the bus right into St. John's road
and I can get on the train here.
So I can say that I've ticked off
right in Saint John's road.
So you've got the Doubletrack here.
This is one of the, lowest sun in my eyes.
Got the double track here.
This is another crossing point and also right in Johns road
where the Depot is.
So there some more trains over the there's a footbridge.
I could probably get a shot of the train from the footbridge
and run down the stomach train, suspect I could.
Okay, ride espionage, oh, there's a new logo on the side.
Better get a shot of that, so there you go.
That proves conclusively that we really have been
to the Isle of Wight,
unless of course we taped the whole thing
with some terrible looking really ropey green screen effect.
Yeah.
(upbeat music)