all right thanks you have your banana, are you sure you don't want my banana.
If you do I won't offer it to you later on you say you want some more banana i'll have eaten it.
i can't bite your bananas
i'll admit i've made a mistake
i mean i'll put this on i'll put this on the screen we're looking for that
hi everybody welcome to a whitewick video welcome to Llangurig welcome to mid wales
this was a railway station just there but it was used only once it was used once in his entire
lifetime not once a week not once a month once in his entire lifetime now to tell you why and tell
you the story of why it was only used any so we have to solve a mystery first like like we like
a mystery we're like it wouldn't be one of our videos without a bit of a mystery um the story of
an abandoned tunnel in its truest sense up in the Cambrian mountains behind the camera and that will
explain why this station was only used once so almonds let's go so to give you a little further
context of what we're doing we've come about six or seven miles along the a44 uh west towards
aberystwyth and now that was the intention of the manchester and milford railway and the manchester
in milford railway wanted to connect manchester with the port of milford down on the south coast
of wales and make a new freight route basically so they could get across the atlantic that was
the goal it all went a bit pear-shaped when they got here you could tell we're going uphill
so as we're walking up the side of the cambrian mountains here trying to
find this abandoned tunnel which will help us tell the story of why that station back there
only ever received one train it's lifetime we'll ask ourselves the
question why did it ever get to that point why didn't it continue and why one train
so that manchester and milford railway had their parliamentary approval in place
but at the same time by an error another railway received parliamentary approval on this section
the mid wales railway now both companies panicked realised the error and got on with building this
section of the line down here and of course that caused numerous problems in terms of
literally physical fights at sight and subsequently another company was set up
which built the line and they were then to be charged each of them would be charged
for the uh the building of that part of the line and of course this drain the resources
of the manchester and milford dramatically so they had to stop their line in the south part strata
florida and just turn left and go to aberystwyth and eventually they didn't make the journey
between manchester and milford so what we're left with today is abandoned sections of the line
including the starting of a tunnel and does anybody know how far they got with the
tunnel it's another one those mystery so we're gonna have a look and see if we can find out
we know they built two cuttings quite extensive cuttings up to where the tunnel was going to be
it was going to be a level tunnel because both portals are about 375 meters thereabouts gonna
be straight it was going to be straight and it was going to be about 1.6 kilometers about a mile long
but what we don't know i don't think anyone knows us did they build construction
shafts because you'd rarely build a tunnel without considering
or certainly that length without considering the construction shaft at least two maybe maybe more
but how much did they do how much did they dig out on the road fork in the road interesting
yeah but that doesn't add up 453 meters well i read that the the tunnel was gonna be three
seven five-ish at the end they even said it would have been close to the highest tunnel in the uk
had it not been for talking time which is 400 meters
strange all right hey at the right place
oh man number one we're too high so we know we've probably passed it so we need to get back down go
back down either until we get service or we see we you know we think we're in a bit of a better
place for it oh sorry i've really messed up and i well it's been a lovely walk it's been a nice
we don't need to go any further because we're this is the 400 meter above sea level line here
and the tunnel i know i'm almost certain it's 376 380 within a few minutes right yep
until we're too high we're like 20 meters too high five now we've come back down a long way
to try and get service on our phone we've i've been talking about doing this for like a year
i've been talking about doing this for such a long time but wanted to do this for such a long
time and today presented itself as the perfect opportunity so i got all my notes out we got
them in the car and i had absolute confidence in where we were going so okay we don't bring
the gps with us because all in the car and uh that was a mistake first was i just had
this point on the map and i knew it was there my head it's 100 there i even marked it on this
morning when we were having breakfast i marked it didn't i yep and h plus i marked the wrong stop
right we made it down there somewhere so we're going to put the drone up and see if we can um
get a better view out looking in uh but there's bits down there
we could get down there so let's do the drone thing and we'll we'll see what happens
so this is where things get a bit interesting now first of all can you see it can you see the
cutting up to where there would be a portal for the tunnel it is there so do feel free to pause
the video at sections we looked and we looked and we flew around probably for the best part of an
hour using lots of drone batteries now we couldn't see it at least until later when we got home
but that's another story we'll come to that very shortly now whilst you're looking
i'll tell you why the Llangurig only ever had one train a freight train probably at that probably
with no goods now the mid wales railway was sneaky realizing the major construction that manchester
and milford had on their hands they loaned a train from london north eastern railway and they sent it
down the line to the station this meant because of the contractual obligations by the manchester
of milford at this shared section they had to pay for its service as well plus a few other things
now this caused him to pretty much abandon the product and as we suggested earlier stop
the tunnel and head to aberystwyth so have you spotted the tunnel comment below and let us know
as i said we couldn't see it for looking for over an hour until we got home but as i say
more on that very shortly in the meantime let's go and wade in and have a look
it was just thick with trees and we looked at the drone shots it was thick with trees there was no
opening so we just found a picture that i saved i'm on my phone from a while ago when somebody
took a picture of it and it looks like a clear opening doesn't it but we didn't see any hell
of that via the drone oh this has turned into a bit of a frustration isn't it right so to make
sure we aren't going to miss anything at all that line there is where everybody says it is so we're
going to we are going to go in and have a look and see if we can see it um i'm not convinced
it's there from the from the gopro shot scope pro drone shots so we're just gonna have to kind of go
in carefully he said we again everybody not we are going to go in carefully and see what we um end up
seeing so uh thank you wish me luck good luck we'll be careful i mean yeah i'm just gonna go
really slowly yeah one step at a time do not put your foot down unless you've got a sturdy footing
yeah because it's just this bit getting over this bit if i kind of go that way maybe i'm wondering
what i mean a bit i'm wondering what's down there i just can't get to it because it's just thick
brambles um everything i might try and go out and come back in again but i'm questioning what that
line is there but it's not deep enough but i can't go any further because in front of me right now
is it's all mossy and you put your foot somewhere and you stand on what is like a branch
and then you put your foot two feet to the left and you just think down a two foot hole
it's so sketchy i can't i can't go any further for for what is another 10 feet
down there 20 feet maybe and there'd be nothing there this is a bit frustrating
i feel i feel really frustrated i thought at worst we would show everybody the portal
the southern portal the picture that we'd seen from online chris parker's picture i think it is
and i thought we'd be able to show people our own version of that our own here it is already we
found it this was a tunnel going to be here but we can't even find the portal we've been up here now
for like two or three hours little bit frustrated people so our apologies for what might not be
the most exciting video but we did think that um you know we'd find something what does what does
really strike you is the landscape here so we're 400 meters above sea level and the people trying
to build a tunnel here they wouldn't have been able to build a construction shaft
because it's two or three hundred meters the mountain goes another two or three hundred
meters up so i don't know any construction shots maybe some of the standards tunnels ones but two
or three hundred meters shaft to dig we don't know if they did dig any we're not going to go and look
because it's a landscape you can't even walk on you can walk on the track here but you can't for
love nor money walk you know i just try to walk five meters in there i'm gonna break my leg okay
so maybe a tad over dramatic there but clearly the wrong time of year so did you see it did you spot
the tunnel cutting one of our issues when we got home was a second picture we found by lee holland
it shows the trees on the right hand side but once we worked out that this picture was 20 years old
we removed them from our mind and then at home studying the drone footage we saw this
that spot there we feel fits not only with the quarry spot marked on the old maps
but also the picture from chris parker so we will come back possibly next spring when the
ground is a lot clearer one more observation before we disappear for the day finally we've
explored this northern part of it and i've been meaning to do this for a very long time to try and
look at this tunnel but we've been unsuccessful oh yeah and some today so we're a bit disappointed as
you can imagine nice walk beautiful scenery yes exactly yeah that's very true a wonderful company
right so thanks for watching we we appreciate your support as always if you enjoy us just waffling
along and try and find older long forgotten abandoned things occasionally finding them
finding them yeah sometimes we find tunnels then do consider joining our little patreon
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um right thanks for watching as other people we will see you this time next week
you