hi i'm paul and i'm rebecca and we explore old abandoned railways canals and other such stuff
you join us on one such abandoned railway today which will probably titled something like how
to stop an express train owing to the story we're going to tell almost today's video okay
so just back there is ringwood and this is the castleman trail
we're not on the castleman trail today but we need to be on the castleman trail to
get to where we're going before we start the video and tell you where we're going
two important things to tell you number one rebecca's got a bit of a dodgy ankle today so
we're gonna be walking a little bit slower than normal um it's already driving you nuts it's not
driving me house at all it's all good rebecca we're taking it slow yeah number two something
important to tell you at the end of the video make sure you stay tuned and watch the end of the video
so this line is the castleman corkscrew the southampton to dorchester railway
as we said not what we're doing today we've just come from ringwood
ringwood there isn't a great deal at the station was it it's an industrial state yeah
full of buildings yeah there's a couple of hat tips to the line with the names of the road
but that's about it today's subject of uh video is however a line that peeled off of that
built in 1862 which is the ringwood christchurch and bournemouth railway now it peeled off rebecca
right here yes so there should be some evidence of it yeah now according to map the 18 1900 map
there's three lines going over this bridge but there's only two wonder why that is there's
clearly only two you can't get three on there no you can't but it should have been right here in
the hedge in front of us and curved round to the south so there should be ahead of us as well like
a little plate layers i wonder if there's any uh evidence of that left oh so excited
we've just found the plate layers hot which was between the lines uh right in front of
us and there's a little bit of that left actually there it is it's kind of funky
cut of old sleepers sleepers at the back again there's a square here of where it was and there's
even a bit of brickwork there which i guess would have been the um like little uh what's
the word i'm looking for fireplace fireplace i was gonna say chimney but yeah same difference
cool right um let's get off of the castleman corkscrew and head south towards bournemouth
right so next up what's that??
so we're just trying to find our way down that big hill despite the fact we're now walking in
the opposite direction yeah bit weird it would we couldn't walk on anything uh between here which
is matcham's view and back up the top where we were with the actual start of the line largely
into the avon castle estate yes yeah because all very private houses very um exclusive kind of
big public rights no public right of way roads exactly so we didn't we avoided that completely
we don't want to carry a camera around there but that whole estate is quite integral to today's
story so we'll come to that in a minute when we do find the track bed that we're looking for
how's your ankle rebecca hurty
so when this line was opened in 1862 part of the 1859 act had some very particular specifics in it
now all the land here was owned by lord melmsbury he didn't really care much for
the role i think he was a bit indifferent fine crack on but he did have two stations
opened as part of those specifics in the act hearn which we'll come to shortly and a lodge halt even
lodge halt and it gave the staff for his lodge a place to get on and off train which was all good
um i've written the comments last week and someone said
i'm extremely lucky to have you as my wife people assume that you come out to keep me
company i just follow you just follow me around don't they they really don't really care and i'm
not really interested yeah and we're not the case we always want to try and make the point
actually you know we do this as a couple we enjoy getting out and about exploring places
learning a lot about the history side of things and yeah my interest is more the railways
rebecca's is more the social history like the genealogy aspect so we do like this as a couple
people don't panic and how can you not like where we're at right now it's really lovely
so just down here and i mean down here is uh again what i assume is the cutting for the railway
we're gonna try and pick it up a bit further south towards hearn lord melmsbury decided in 1870
only sort of eight years after the railway had opened he was going to sell
all of that land there and he sold it to the turner family or the turner and turner family
and they however did care very much about the railway and they cared about the specifics of
the act 1859 because in that act it suggested you could hold up a red flag or red lamp at avon lodge
halt and stop any ordinary train so they put that in place now by this time express strains were a
thing they obviously express train does what it says on the tin and they started as far as we're
aware to hold up red flags and red lamps and stop express trains or at least attempt to now not very
expressed not very express if you had to stop at every given halt according to the act so of course
a court battle ensued right so next up we've got oh oh don um oh god what's he doing i don't know
that's
oh i mean it's like the first time we first found a zest there and yeah okay we found
the cutting in that but this is like the first time we've actually been able to um
kind of walk along it i guess was the right word so turner and turner let's get back to the court
case rebecca what do you think is going to happen where are we going with this i've read the spoiler
so i know what's happening i read the spoilers i know i know i'm going to kick off a big fight
it's all going to kick off now turner and turner i think they're pretty unreasonable frankly because
they want to ex stop express trains now it's not like they've got to stop any train they
fancy really yeah basically yeah now the court basically ruled and said you're idiots to a
degree it's an express train and therefore it's not an ordinary train if it was an ordinary train
you could stop it but obviously you can't get a grip so they lost the court battle
i know it's 1870 so railways have been around in a passenger sense for
30 years or so but it's still interesting to see how they handled things like express trains
and that and how it all developed over the years and people's court battles and i guess
these are the sort of court battles that last to today yeah and they're still quoted as today
often is the case isn't it yeah absolutely yeah so it would be turner and turner versus uh london
southwestern railway i wonder if that is a case it could be of course it is yeah it happened wow
so just just back there is railway cottages now if you look on the os map the pathway goes
to there and then down on the main road towards main road towards hearn station
now we just met the i assume what the owners of the house there they said no longer a path here no
well that that's not a thing is it no no longer a path here she said oh no the path it's all changed
it's all changed so you can't can't go down here um so we're left to try and find a way south
unable now to walk on the track bed you better walk on the track bed and end up at hearn station
which we can't so we'll try and find her because it's got quite a treat and don't forget there's
also a treat at the end of this i'll treat it in the video but it's kind of a thing at the
end of a video yeah which we do one and a half favor and ask so stick around don't go anywhere
but we found hearn now we know it's her because they've got a
lovely coach in the car park of the pub it's now a pub called the avon causeway
which makes sense now we came in from the south not the north because as we said the north pathway
seems to have blocked so we're going to turn this into a mini mission to find out why that public
right of way has been blocked because i feel very strongly about that sort of thing uh it shouldn't
be watched if you've been on his twitter or you've um seen in previous videos we do have a bit of a
public right-of-way thing going on as you sometimes right so beautiful home in front
of us there have a bit of renovation work done to it so all good i'm sure big tick for us we've got
one more station to do down at christchurch let's have a look at this pathway okay
right so as we suspect as we suspect what can i say protected as we um suspected someone has
just put a massive fence there as if it's their garden well it's not all that there in front of
those houses is open access land and it has a public right away for it too so two things
combined have been completely ignored i wonder how you got away with that so let's do some digging
now we are going to finish our this part of the journey before the treat
as we head towards christchurch which is just down the road from here not far away
at all now christchurch originally lasted for about 20 years on route to bournemouth now the
reason it was overtaken by christchurch as is today where in the late 1800s they discovered
beaches the victorians discovered the seaside and therefore a new line was put in across the south
from brockenhurst it saved a lot of time and it meant this line didn't need to be used
so after all those legal wranglings um it turned out they weren't really
going to use the line anyway and this line pretty much ceased to exist after the 1930s
so that was the ringwood christ church and bournemouth railway
thank you for joining us today you may have noticed we were being a little bit trolled by
santa good reason for that you may remember we last year did a charity run or we did a santa run
but we couldn't raise money for charity this year we can raise money for charity so we're doing it
again we're towing santa around our local town who are we raising money for santa the countess
of brecknock hospice right so if you're feeling fruity and you fancy uh helping us out donating
to our calls then click on the links where are the links rebecca they're in the doobly-doo below
comment yes so if you're feeling free help us out and donate to our local charity obviously that's
not an obligation but we'd appreciate if you if you fancy doing that why not please please right
thanks for watching as ever folks big thanks to santa for joining us today in various capacities
i'm not sure they're completely wholesome but good fun nonetheless we'll see you next week
you