hi folks i'm paul hello and i'm rebecca this is a car park in the middle of wiltshire but not just
any car park in the middle of butcher for this is devisers station road car park gives you an idea
of what we're looking at today kind of it's called station road because right here used to be devised
a station quite a sizable station at the other end of the car park is something we'd like to
show you today and is the topic of today's video as you may have already guessed from the title
probably give away the town of devizes sat quite high on a ridge now back in the day that probably
gave a natural defensive structure to the west but what this did mean in more recent history is
that a tunnel was required for the railway that passed through here now the tunnel itself was
abandoned in the 60s as part of the beach in cuts but unlike many that have been left to ruin well
this one has been fully repurposed for something really rather fascinating let's go inside and take
a look okay so so this is a is a bad kingdom brunel tunnel um that was built 150 years ago
it's 220 meters long in 1983 two brothers the barnard brothers took it over as a shooting range
and they ran it that way for some time and then they were looking to retire so we took it on in
2000 and expanded facilities and used it as you will see shortly so we're following paul into
the main customer facing retail area where they sell a whole bunch of weird and wonderful things
where we sell air rifles air pistols shotguns and football rifles and so on now if we dig
a little further into this tunnel with paul our guide today well here's where things get a little
bit more interesting so we have various different disciplines that people can shoot in here
i say all the way up to full bore in some cases people bring their own air rifles their pistols
in other cases we have them out we also are home office approved shooting club so people can join
and they're then enabled to fire their own weapons and you know higher calibers and so on whereas
members of public are limited to air rifles and their pistols in general terms right so this is a
25 yard six lane range and what you can do is you can move these targets out any distance
according to this panel depending on your skill set so obviously the really good ones put it right
out to 25 yards yeah but as your your beginning you would put it to a shorter distance obviously
so almost directly above us there is a longer range 50 yards with five lanes this range has
some interesting features and you start to get a feel for some of the business activities that
could be deployed here but first of all a couple of tunnel mysteries for you historically this is
great fun we actually got a local historical society some years ago saying look could they
come in and dine in here and have their agm for example i hadn't realized but as i understand
it the front bit here is bricklined yeah because the engines would back up at night and so they'd
be under steam as they backed up and you can actually see in the ceiling in some areas
where it's been eroded yeah while they're still under steam so this is sort of sacrificial brick
then you go through to the next bit which is the lovely old stone yeah we shall see more
clearly um as we get further down the tunnel but you know that's obviously the main tunnel
so range is done let's go downstairs and out the back this is very much the non-public area
so that essentially is the um the retail section um the members of the public section and so on
coming down this tunnel we're going to the professional section as we say where
we do ballistic testing it's testing of ballistic materials like armoured glass
armoured plate ballistic vests for mod end users and for the manufacturers so the manufacturers
will uh come to us and say look we want to play we want to make ours better or whatever and so
they all experiment with different materials and try and improve on their design obviously
and we can help them by throwing things usually you know metal things bullets and so on at it
faster and faster or different natures so they can improve their design we obviously cannot advise
them on their design we are absolutely independent test facility the walk down to the test facilities
was joyous they've retained a lot of the original feature here throughout the business
from a historical point of view yes you can sort of recognize a lot of this yeah
got all the inlets in the walls here and you've got another one further on the pulling
that because this again i'm not sure when this brickwork was put in whether that was put in by
the brothers who took over the time sure now you got through to the back to the back of the nation
so let's get down to business what exactly goes on deep in the devices tunnel past the public
access areas the customers can look through here or on the cctv of what's going on in their trial
they're not normally allowed through here because this is where we take control of all the firing
yep the computer here is controlling the velocity measurement systems and the firing is controlled
from the firing box here we really far real guns um we do occasionally occasionally some film work
down at the back end of the tunnel so we do have a range of of uh certain weapons but the bulk of
the time we fire from what's called the universal receiver yeah and we then hand load the ammunition
because if you buy a box of ammunition even from our shop and top quality box of ammunition
the velocity can vary quite a bit now we have to do absolutely that here because the international
standards require us to fire at a velocity of between 800 and 820 meters per second for example
so we will load the ammunition to notional 810 meters per second
and the team here really good at that you know customize one meter per second for example
so that we're giving the best possible chance of meeting the standard because we don't want to say
our customers have got a thousand pound ballistic door for example whoops we found it a bit too slow
or we found a little bit too fast and then we have a range of velocity measurement systems so these
three trolleys you'll see on the left uh different types of velocity systems that are placed in front
of the gun the universal receiver but normally that will be moved further down the range at a
set distance depending on the standard typically 5 meters or seven meters away from the sample
which is placed here now you're seeing a piece of glass that has suffered somewhat
and the international standard there requires that we fire three bullets at the glass at a defined
triangular pitch yeah and if there's been no penetration then it has passed so
the pass fail judgment will be done by looking at the back here seeing that nothing's come through
and finally a material at the back depending on the standard that would be aluminium foil or card
if there's no holes in it it's passed the final section of the tunnel
while still used for some professional aspects also is home to yet more fascinations through
in this room here we have a preparation room which has freezers ovens and so on to
prepare the material so if for example we are testing an aircraft windscreen
that's at minus 50 degrees uh when it's up in the air so obviously it's going to perform
slightly differently when you're shooting at it or simulating a well it won't be a bird
strike at that height but you know some sort of fragment yeah um you that you need it at
the temperature that is suitable uh here we have yep bare tunnel so we fire the larger calibers in
here we've also got various other opportunities and we as i said we do some sort of film work we
have panel systems here which we can lay out for people to practice shooting in dummy hotel rooms
you know that sort of thing the discovery channel uh viking warrior women there was
an excellent story about arrows uh were tend to be quite sort of broad points like this right
and which is why chain was developed chain male we normally call it a chain
um and that came out with a sort of hole that was about that size so the arrow was stopped and that
was okay yeah then they came out with a brilliant design where the arrowhead was actually much um
finer yeah and had grooves on it so you had the same sort of effect and it goes straight through
the chain yeah so they came and did a documentary which being broadcast and they wanted my comment
on the ballistics of it but basically the arrow went through i think they had a lady olympic
archer who came along the arrow went straight through the chain penetrated by about that much
as we walk away from the ranges the the devisers tunnel we can hear a few shots in the background
but it's really good to see uh a tunnel that's not repurposed if that's the right phrase for set for
hobby whether it's a walk-in cycling or another hobby that we have no idea about no but shooting
but there's a lot of people in there now as it's got on towards um sort of lunch just after lunch
and it's being used and it's great to see it it's amazing yeah it's a perfect sort of little end to
the devises branch line in our history here so big thanks to paul and the team back at Devizes tunnel
and from rebecca and i well we will see you probably this time next sunday 5 p.m
you