hi i'm paul and i'm rebecca and we make videos about old abandoned railways canals
and other such routes join us on today's adventure which includes,
injured signalmen two accidents and naughty businessman
go, really lovely
so you join us today on the Salisbury and Dorset junction railway had a number of other names but
we're going to call it that and we're heading from south to north ticking off every disused station
it's a line we've been meaning to cover for quite a while but a national shortage of fuel has meant
in this country that we um are doing things a little bit more local for the next couple
of weeks bit awkward are we actually on a public right-of-way rebecca i'm not entirely
sure there were no there's no signs there's no fences we're not this is a very job trodden
it's a very well trodden pathway so i'm gonna i'm gonna take this as like permissive i would say so
so the first stop of the day was verwood verwood station
that is now a housing estate next to the albion yes
yeah pretty little pub very little gardens and things under the bridge as well absolutely
i think we've come to the end of the line that we can walk
on now rebecca because there's a big old fence
so second station of the day i keep saying dragons
yeah it's not dragons there's no war daggers daggers uh road stations sorry
station yard just down here so i don't think there's anything else
big biker event going on there's excuse the noise
at first glance fordingbridge looks a bit rubbish the whole of this industrial estate
is where the yard and station used to be it's gone it's gone but if you pop around this corner
um you'll see something which is a bit of a tip to the railway why am i walking backwards
so we have ahead of us what's it called it's
a railway hotel it's a boutique hotel restaurant and bar lovely
finally we have some proper track bed to walk on in the distance back there it's fallen bridge
we're now heading for breamore and i've passed breamore a thousand times probably more in the car
and i've never walked along this part of the track bed and looking ahead of us now it's lovely isn't
it it's very pretty yeah opened in 1866 took six years from the first meeting to have this line
which would connect salisbury from aldebury junction down to west small junction on the
southampton and dorchester line now you're the salisbury and dorset junction railway company
and you've built this line okay are you happy um i suppose so excellent you should be have
you just put a railway why would you not be happy rebecca you've got well yeah yeah i'm
gonna run it because i'm london southwestern railway i'm the railway giant okay i'll run it
for you right yeah got this covered yeah so what happened was i was a bit sneaky and i only gave
you 14 quid in the first six months to a year and also i was a bit sneaky because i didn't really
want anyone to use this line i wanted him to go on my track my railways because i'd make more money
so people that wanted to travel to let's say bournemouth for that kind of area
i didn't issue tickets in waterloo well that's naughty i know i'm sorry you're not
because i feel like we're going to walk through someone's garden because they've got like football
girls up and everything but this is a pathway so with my uh deviousness i'm making no money
you're making no money which is good that's exactly my plan you're making no money
so if within 20 years i'm just going to buy you out and say yeah i'll have it
and all of a sudden it's my railway i'm going to make the the profit from it if i decide to do that
this is breamore everybody this is a significant tick on our list of stations to be ticked off
i'm i'm still marvin in that lovely bridge well what'd you find rebecca what do you think
apparently when it was obviously closed it was left to just decay and rot and fall down
in 2005 the current owners decided to revamp it and this is what it turned into amazing
it's nearly october so well i've feared the worst but what gorgeous days is a good summer's day
breamore do you want to sum it up in a couple of words
i'll break up some up in a couple of sentences go really lovely
so just back there is the river avon and the point where this line crossed the river avon and now
we're walking into downton the little uh village or town of downton we are getting to the point
where there were two accidents within 20 years of each other 1884 the third of june a passenger
train leaves salisbury heads for downtown picks up some passengers at downton and then continues
it journey south but almost immediately as it left the station it picked up a bit too much speed for
the line it came around this curve we're on now doing 45 miles an hour a number of the pins came
out of the chairs and essentially it derailed and it derailed into a ditch a number of people three
people i think and two people passed thereafter in salisbury infirmary salisbury hospital
so 1884 um we're now in the avon dyke um and we would have been three or four feet deep in water
so when the carriages came down here and crashed into here you can understand why
three people sadly lost their lives from drowning
one of which was the daughter of the station master back at fording bridge
oh god right onwards to downton so downton was the site of another accident okay so i
did a terrible job of describing that in person so let's use the ability to do some voice over
a 16 van good train is heading north now that's right on the wonderful graphic you see before you
it's running late and blocking passenger trains so initially it needs to get out of the way of
one that's also heading in the same direction but there is an issue it's too long for the loop
downturn it therefore moves forward and allows a passenger train into the station it then reverses
backwards and allows a passenger train out of the front of the station and on north uninterrupted
then there comes the second issue there is another train passenger train due to be heading south
so the goods train has to now essentially complete that manoeuvre in the same way but backwards
so it lets in the train from the north into the station and then starts to move forward on its way
now two errors occurred here number one the passenger train is allowed to move forward
because it's in a hurry number two the last three cars of the freight train break free both of these
factors caused the collision depicted once again in this wonderful graphic i speak lightly about
this accident of course because nobody was injured no fatality no face answer that was 1904 and again
they cited things like um the coupling wasn't done properly the signal was to blame as well
so we just walked from downton the village on the border of the new forest down there now the track
bed there was around about 65 meters 60 65 meters above sea level and we are walking considerably
uphill to about 95 meters now that's too big for a cutting and if you are one of our extremely
long-term viewers you'll know that in 2018 we did a video on the downton tunnel now we didn't
know how to research railways then or how to look for stuff so we just oh let's go find it
what we didn't realize it was only 90 yards long so imagine a 90-yard tunnel under this expansive
hill here but the only solution is it has to have been buried along with its huge cuttings which are
filled and just there i don't know how well the camera shows it but that is a part of the original
cutting the tunnel was much further along so let's walk across top of this field because we're nearly
at the end of the line and you can probably see there's a big dip in the landscape well
that's where the tunnel would have started probably about 50 60 yards further back that way
and again only 90 yards long thereabouts so massively infilled many years ago by
whoever did it the farmer or the whoever it be the end of the line was all debris alderberry junction
yeah so audibly junction now between downtown and salisbury is eight and a half miles
now that eight and a half mile stretch you could get quite a speed up in your
train and it was very tempting for the drivers to do just that so bear in mind there's a single
track line therefore it's operated on a token system within a token they called it a something
else but it's essentially a token system and a number of occasions the uh guy in the aldebary
signal box was injured by the token because the trains were going so fast they didn't want to slow
down and they had to put certain rulings in place for that for that junction specifically right yep
so this is the end of the line for us it goes on another mile towards the end
aldebridge junction in the north but a lot of that is under the a36 so um so we shall
bid you farewell thank you very much for watching our travels if you haven't already
press subscribe and you like this kind of content press subscribe because we do weekly videos 5 p.m
on a sunday abandoned railways canals and stuff like that and such like addendum to
the video not an outta an addendum um the date today rebecca is the 26th 26th of the 9th 2021
22nd of the 9th 2021 so someone's uh touched this up done the pointing at work
or work just four days ago how cool is that that was nearly an uptick in yeah right goodbye
you