(birds chirping)
Morning, I don't know why I'm whispering
'cause there's no one else about.
Well, it's 'cause it's early, it's 4:45 kind of early.
I'm feeling chirpy 'cause I had about five hours sleep.
Someone that's feeling less chirpy is Dave.
Morning.
How much sleep did you get?
Maybe an hour, maybe 20 minutes.
Well, this is gonna be fun. This is gonna be a whole video
where Dave's had almost no sleep.
We're here in Basingstoke
to catch a very particular train.
Yay! Yes.
Let's do it.
So we're headed for platform four.
We're getting the 4:54, from four, at Basingstoke.
I like the fact that sunrise this morning is also at 4:54.
So the train departs at exactly the same time
that the sunrise is.
Is this us?
So this is two Lima, one zero.
I got that, right.
It's the 4:54, Basingstoke to Waterloo,
but via the District line.
The South Western line
to Woking comes up through Wimbledon.
Basically gets to Clapham Junction
and into Waterloo.
At Clapham Junction it meets a line that comes in
from Reading and from Windsor,
but connecting the two the South Western Railway
a bit of track via East Putney and Southfields
and Wimbledon Park, down to to Wimbledon.
If those names sound familiar that's because that's
now the District line.
I like Dave's map,
but I thought I'd draw my own one here
where it shows you that once a day,
a train travels up and goes through the District line,
passing through but not stopping
at Wimbledon Park, Southfields and East Putney stations
and then there's a curve of track where
it goes off and joins the main line again through
Wandsworth Town and back up to Clapham Junction.
And there's also one late night
return service in the evening.
So there's all these strange bits of track
and curves of track which gets sort of one a day,
maybe two a day, in some cases like one a week
or just odd services.
On screen now is a website PSUL,
Passenger Services Over Unusual Lines,
used to be a standalone website
it's now part of the Branch Line Society website.
Is that right, Dave?
So it's an amazing website
and it lists all these weird and wonderful services.
So Dave, is there a name for this hobby?
Rare truck bashing, perhaps.
For how long have you been doing this?
That's a good question. Probably 10 or 12 years now.
It's been a long time of just gradually checking off,
not just, not just every rare bit,
but every track in the country gradually.
So that you can say that you've ridden
over every sort of, every bit of rail.
Almost, almost every line.
In the land.
There's a few bits and pieces I'm still missing.
Okay. So what we're gonna do now, Dave,
we're gonna drop some graphics and we're going to do
Dave's Top Five Obscure Pieces of Track to Bash.
So here's five obscure pieces of track,
which get a very rare service and are hard to tick off.
First is the Edinburgh Suburban line,
which avoids Haymarket and goes to Waverley the long way
round served by just one cross-country train a day.
Second is one of my favourites.
That's the lesser used curve
just to the north of Manningtree
where Greater Anglia trains from Harwich International
curve around towards Ipswich
instead of going down towards Manningtree.
Third is one of Dave's favourites.
That's the Swansea District line,
which avoids Swansea altogether.
And it's usually done by trains meeting the boats at
Fishguard Harbour.
In Southeast London there's the curve at New Beckenham,
which is very rarely used,
but sometimes engineering works at a weekend
will divert all the services this way.
Engineering side effects is often a good way to tick off
obscure pieces of line.
And then there's the line between Wolverhampton and Walsall,
where one early morning train on a Saturday only,
that's right a once a week service,
goes to Rugely Trent Valley using this curve for
which the rest of the week
sees no passenger services at all.
Where are we now? Farnborough.
I think so.
The sun has come up.
So off camera Dave's been telling me about a time
you went to Swansea once and what Dave, what happened?
The train didn't use the diversion.
It used the main line.
Which diversion was this?
This was the Ogmore Vale extension,
which is sort of basically a route through Margam Yards,
you know, Port Talbot,
but just the driver either didn't need to
or couldn't drive that way
and yeah, we just used the normal routes sadly.
YouTube, something very unexpected.
This train is for London Waterloo.
The next station is Woking.
Which isn't that funny, and that is...
In the previous shot you saw our friendly guard
in the background come down,
Hey, Drew, our friendly guard who came and chatted to us,
and we literally said, oh,
we're here to get the train that goes around the curve
and Dave was explaining how once he went to Swansea
and the train didn't run and the guard then went.
Sorry, the driver doesn't (indistinct)
Due to the pandemic what's happened is that a lot of
drivers have lost their route knowledge over the
last 18 months, 12 months, 18 months.
Today there's a driver change at Woking
and the driver that's getting on at Woking
he hasn't ridden the route for six months
and therefore isn't.
His competence has lapsed.
So he can't, he hasn't got permission to ride the route.
So we've honestly come all the way to Basingstoke
to do this and the train...
It's not gonna do it.
Not gonna do it.
Are you all right?
Under my face mask, I'm trying to hide my disappointment.
Is it working?
Southwest, if you're watching,
Dave and I spent money to stay in a hotel
in Basingtoke, tickets and everything,
we've been planning this all winter.
Cause we almost did the New Beckenham curve
and Dave went no, no,
this one's sort of easier to do because you only have to
go down to Basingstoke to do it in its entirety
and we've been scuppered.
What's that one doing?
That's doing the connection between Byfleet & New Haw.
That's a rare curve as well, isn't it?
Yeah.
How often do they happen?
I think that's the only one on a Saturday,
but we may have an all day on Sunday.
So that one's quite easy to do.
We shoulda got that.
(Geoff laughing sadly)
(indistinct speaker announcements)
We've hit that moment of,
we both been up early and without having breakfast,
we've got to Clapham early,
cause we weren't due to be here until 6:01 and it's 5:56.
We've now got to sit at Clapham for five minutes.
Can we get some breakfast at Waterloo?
Dave looks so asleep.
(indistinct speaker announcements)
I can't remember last time I was at Waterloo this early,
when it's so empty.
Dave, we're doing the summing up shot.
Let's go and do it outside.
Such are the perils of a weird unique track bashing.
Sometimes it just doesn't work.
Yeah.
Not the first time, won't be last time, you know,
you just got to take it as it comes.
Dave, I think it's your call.
I think you get to tell me what we all know what YouTube
was all screaming for me to do
because you've ridden the track before, but I haven't.
So...
You've got to come back someday next week
and just go to Wimbledon one morning.
I have, haven't I? It's what I got to do.
Dave, thank you for coming to Basingstoke with me last night
and this morning for an ultimately pointless journey.
I think the video should now dramatically fade to black
and when it fades up, it'll be a whole new day.
Fade up from black.
Good morning.
It's half past five.
It's four days later. I'm at Wimbledon.
Surely today it'll run where it's meant to.
I'm just going for this dramatic effect with the rising sun.
Look at that. It says it's on time.
In seven minutes time,
it's going to pull in on platform five
and we'll go up the District line.
I hope.
Ladies and Gents, this is the
South Western Railway, service to London, Waterloo,
and we'll call it Clapham Junction, Vauxhall
and London Waterloo.
And this time everything went to plan.
The train goes over the crossover
and onto the District line tracks
and passes through Wimbledon Park
and then through Southfields without stopping.
And then East Putney with a double track passes alongside
a platform here that's never used by an underground train.
That double track becomes a single track though,
as the line that arced over the main line has been removed,
but wonderfully the abutment is still in place.
The best way to see those though are to drop to Google
satellite view and check them out that way.
The train then crosses over down onto the main line,
stops at Clapham, then Vauxhall and finally Waterloo.
Quarter past six, quarter past six,
trains at Waterloo.
And this time there's no Dave to do the summing up.
I've come back to the same point where we were on Saturday,
but Dave, where are you?
You're not here today.
Links in the description to PSUL,
Passenger Services over Unusual Lines
and the train we caught on Saturday and today,
the one northbound in the morning
and there's one in the evening that comes back down as well.
That's the South West train that runs over
through the District line
and through those District line stations.
I'm thrilled to have done this twice. Thanks for watching.
Please press subscribe. More videos to come.
Thanks.