The missing Viaduct and the signal box.

[Music] [Music] hello my name is martin and welcome back to another video total i don't think we're in manchester anymore you know right so we're out in the wilds i'm going to show you on the map where we are but a long long time ago this is the story behind this video somebody tipped me off about a viaduct out in the wilds that was abandoned and just part of it left standing i thought that sounds amazing i need to go look at that now that tip-off was quite a few years ago and it took me this long to come out and have a look at it and unfortunately i choose october to come and look i've got it down here because i can't possibly come up here on my own it's just too far out in the wilds so the railway that we're on is the south durham and lancashire union railway and my god who would build the railway line across the moorland that that we've we've ventured across now this viaduct that i'm on here i'm on a viaduct here at the moment and it's called the merry gill viaduct and it's teamed up it's paired up with another viaduct down the way called the podguil viaduct these are easy this is a nature reserve it's got a lovely little path that goes across it but what we're going to do is go to the abandoned viaduct the bioduck that isn't really there anymore and it's called the bilar viaduct i wanted to call it bella but i think it's pronounced belar my god right i'm sorry to waffle on but is this thing out in the middle of nowhere i've spent i know i've already spent a full day trying to get to one side of it and i've come back up in the wilds on a second day now to try and see it again so we're going to head off up into the wilds and try and find the interesting side and i'll explain that of bela viaduct okay so there you go we're up in cumbria this week um not a vast distance but believe me it felt like it when i drove it um this this last week there's the direct route of the railway line it's the stainmore line it goes from barnard castle over to t bay um this is taken from rail maps online that's the actual route of the line in blue i've circled where the bilar viaduct is you can see it's quite a rugged terrain there um it brought uh coke and coal over from the northeast of britain over to the west coast where there was uh all sorts of iron workings from what i understand it was built primarily as a freight line but it did carry passenger workings as well now i'm not going to give you a comprehensive history of the line here for me this is more about the beauty and the poetry of this the remains of this viaduct stuck out on its own and the poetry of this little signal box that we're going to look at so for me it's more about the imagery there are there will be other things you can read other websites you can read where you can find out the absolute history of the line i'll give you as much history as possible but it's more about i don't know the way the place looks for me really right don't say i never bring you anywhere nice because it's absolutely beautiful but i hate it because we're in the middle of nowhere and as much as i keep looking at this thing it's not getting anything error in fact it's not getting any near that is it definitely isn't right so we're headed over there to the remains of the viaduct and there's a signal box on this side but they're saying this ain't an easy walk in fact this is what's this now a ravine look at this nice we head down a bit for god's sake this is just horrific almost made it just crossed the last river oh last little stream it's a marsh across the marsh can you believe i feel like such a city slicker right now but we're here all we need now is the farmer to come out and say off get off milan yeah i'll turn the camera around and you can see what we can see we're still in marshland here [Music] [Music] i finally made it that was horrendous we just walked across all that over there you see in the distance and it looks near and it's not but here it is the remains of the bilar viaduct look at that and look at the valley expand [Music] the pilar viaduct construction of this wrought and cast iron giant got underway of all months in november 1857. contractors gilks wilson and company erected this bridge in just over two years and 196 feet for a short time it was the tallest bridge in england as you may know a couple of days ago i came to look at this what turned up on the other side over there the first train to cross the viaduct was in november of 1860 it was a freight train and it was one of many that would bring raw materials from the northeast of england across the wild pennines to the insatiable iron and steel industry in cumbria now this iron leviathan was built at a cost of 31 hundred and thirty pounds it was 347 yards long 24 feet wide and it had 16 spans and like i say it was 196 feet tall one of the highest bridges in england just for a short time just after world war ii weight limitations were placed on the viaduct as it was now aging and there was limited maintenance that was going on with it so double headed workings two locomotives on one train was limited quite often they would place one at the back so the weight was spread out however given the terrain quite often many many trains needed that double-headed working with two locomotives so this weight limitation was one of the many factors that sealed the fate of the line and ultimately the viaduct right let's take a look down this hill and just see if we can have a look at the uh the river at the bottom it like say is it's just marshland i don't keep saying it i'm never coming back here again don't blame you very cinematic but uh nah nah not for me right so we're gonna go down into the valley if we can um and we'll just see i'm sure there's some stanchions down here flick to a little camera if it's easier to carry down the hill with all my gear right we have a fence and we have a valley onwards [Music] [Music] [Music] so can you imagine prior to june 1963 when this immense fire duct was still standing bolted to this rock 198 feet above us well probably not at this point but down there in the valley it was it was been quite a sight to see the wind in this valley is incredible so when you went over the top on the train i bet you got a right blast from the prevailing winds the river bella is just down there i could just hear it now and we can't go any further because it's very very steep there now i'll show you okay so if i can just interject at this point some of you may know that this is the second day filming up at the belar viaduct a few days previous i've i've been up there and set out too late and then i'll keep making this big thing about it being miles away in the middle of nowhere well on that first day that's how it felt i didn't know where i was going i seemed to drive forever up the m6 from uh from manchester we then turned off we took the wrong turning we had to go back we got to this place called barrass barrasse and then took the equivalent of a road slash track packed up near this cattle grid and started to walk across this moorland gary came with me this that day me mate gary and he's not even interested in this place but he came with me for a trip out we've walked across this moorland for about an hour and a half going to the brows of hills looking over nothing there walking down the hill following the the dry stone walls past the enchanted forest through more marshland and he's there behind me follow me faithfully thank you gary for coming and eventually we stood and looked at the the the bilar valley and there was the viaduct got up to it and of course it's not the interest inside it's the side without the signal box so i did some filming there um so i'm going to show you that a bit of filming that that i did then much the weather was very different it was throwing it down i looked at the valley and i thought i need to get across there and film where the signal box is i looked at that valley and i thought it's quite a trek that but i was determined to go down and across it's a good job i didn't because the river bela is down in a ravine you go down the valley and then it's like a drop to the river i'd have never have done it and gary like i said in last week's video said to me we ain't going to do this we've got a good hours trek back to the car it's now 5 p.m we're going to lose light soon we don't be on we don't want to be on these moors in the dark and he was right absolutely right so a couple of days later i went back and and basically nailed it but here's that footage of that kind of ill-fated first day where i had to put my tail between my legs realised i hadn't got everything that i wanted and take the long drive back to manchester check out the weather so it's all buggy here now we see that that's obviously where the trains came through the two stone abutments are now forced to stare at each other across the valley like banished lovers that once held cast iron hands they call to each other forever longing [Music] [Music] now the chief engineer for the bilar viaduct was a man named thomas booch or thomas belch i'm not quite sure how you pronounce it he had a bit of a maligned career because his career ended because he also um engineered and built the tay bridge in dundee that ended in disaster it's since been rebuilt but the original bridge collapsed there was a violent storm on sunday the 28th of december 1879. a train was crossing the bridge uh the bridge collapsed the train went down into the into the estuary killing all aboard so he was um his career ended after that um the b la vida stood for over a hundred years so if you read about him you'll read a lot about him i'm not qualified to um cast any aspersions or or give any judgment on his character or his engineering skills but that's just a bit of an extra information for you now another interesting fact about the viaduct is this and i love this a gentleman named charles davis wrote a verse about the viaduct and it was buried in the central column of the eighth pier on the 6th of september 1859 it was found later in 1963 when they were cutting up the viaducts and and demolishing it i'm going to read the verse to you because it's quite i quite like it so if you'll forgive me i'll i'll try and indulge in a bit more poetry this is what this is how the verse goes see now belar's beauteous sights begin whose curling stream shall ever flow within and underneath this splendid monster bridge shall floods henceforth descend from every ridge and thousands wonder at the glorious site when trains will run aloft both day and night for ages past no human tongue could tell of such a structure or thy monster gill time will roll on and mortals may increase when those who see it now we hope will rest in peace i quite like that and the idea that that was found when they were demolishing the viaducts is quite wonderful [Music] [Music] tell you what it must have been a lonely life up here i mean there is a farmhouse just further down there where you say the trains used to stop and drop off supplies yeah apparently the signalman lived here pretty much all the time and they needed coal and water so they used to get supplies dropped off from the trains one hell of a place it's only small as well looks like there's been an outside staircase there don't they and then you can see this was this was trackside pebble dashed it's nice in it and then the trap bed goes down there we'll have a look at that in a minute um and it goes into a cutting but it does the same on the other side and when i came the other day don't mention that day because comes from a cutting on the other side and straight out onto the into the valley the belar signal box was a bleak outpost the howling winds rarely ceased and were a constant reminder of this isolated location manned by a crew of three around the clock trains would drop off supplies of food and coal for the fire in the half that was never extinguished on the long dark evenings a local would visit that lived in a nearby abandoned farm his tales of wandering the lanes by day and sleeping in haystacks at night the only but welcome entertainment [Music] [Music] images that you find on the internet only taken a few years ago show the roof and the rafters still intact on this place as you can see from the images inside that i took it's all collapsed into the building now and i don't suppose it's long before the wind and the weather eventually brings this place down to the ground okay so we're just going to take a look up the trap head here there's i think there's a remains of a bridge down there um weather's held off it's not rained amazingly the other day when i came drenched but um yeah it's not rained but i don't want to speak too soon anyway that's the way we're going that's where we're going down the cutting take a quick look at where the line went there you go a bit of a bridge there so the footings of this bridge that we're looking at here if i look show you an old picture that bridge in the background behind the train that is the uh that's what we're looking at the footings for that bridge now not sure what that was because we when we walked up that way you couldn't really make out what was originally there but anyway that's what we're looking at and what did i say about rain just a moment ago i know the lens is covered in rain now but yes it's moved in on us but fortunately at this point we've done all the filming we need to do and we're heading back to the car so that was the bela viaduct yeah if you go go in summer or better better best off just don't go right it's in the middle of nowhere um you could go to the wrong side or you could go to the side that we went to which is at the um where the signal box is and it's beautiful it's lovely but it's wild as anything and the minute i said we've done well for the weather and it's not been raining what happens and it literally came in within seconds so what a place fantastic and you know you've got to look at the old pictures to just see what it was like fantastic fantastic thing but i will never go back i've said that about five times in this video now but i will never go back there again you're too far away from home i've got what we've got a two-hour drive or anyway so here we are now we're further down the line are we further towards tea bay aren't we yeah further towards the tv so we were out in the wilds over there at the beeline viaduct we're now moved down the line and we're further towards tea bay so we've just been looking at the merry girl viaduct and it's like i say it's great being on the viaduct but you can't look at the things i've tried to get you a shot of that we've just walked further down and the camera is now in a little plateless hut is it yeah yeah yeah it's a little railwayman's hot so i'll show you this and then we'll carry on down the line to the podgill podgill viaduct yes so we'll go down the line to pod go by drugs first off i'll show you these old buildings so this is a little plate layers hut a railwayman's hut if you like it was trackside and inside they've done a grand job because they've put all photos of the line and the area in now i managed to catch some of the photos but it's difficult on camera because you get this reflection all the time so i'll try and show you a couple of the photos but if you do want to see them fully and read all the information you'll have to have a walk up there yourself now just as we leave the plate layers hook right next door was the merry gill signal box and there it is and these are the remains of that signal box that's all that's left just one side wall on the rear wall you can see there probably a fireplace i bet the uh sigelman warmed his cockles around that quite a few times because it was a it's bloody freezing and bleak up here and there you'll see that a buffer or the remains of a train now that was from an accident in 1955 at smardale so they've obviously brought it down the track and put it here and it makes a fitting tribute to what was okay so that was the merry gill viaduct and the platelet is hot in the signal box we're gonna walk down here now to the pod gill viaduct hopefully we might get a better view of this one if we can do and let's see what happens there now apparently so far out in the wild this is how far out we are away from manchester there are red squirrels around here we keep seeing signs don't we saying red squirrels well god bless them because red squirrels are the nate the native squirrel of britain and those uh thuggish greys came along was it from canada yeah some people picked me up um the thuggish greys came along and um took the land off the reds but anyway up here is red squirrel land that's how far out we are from uh from manchester so here it is the podgill viaduct another limestone giant it's difficult to get an angle on these viaducts because unless you actually go out into the field though over there which is probably private land and we can't get to anyway it's difficult to get the full thing in but this is considerably larger than the marigold mary gill viaduct this is obviously pog guild by adults and it's massive absolutely massive i'll see if we can get any facts for you about height and all the rest of it but what an amazing structure and what feat of engineering to build it across this terrain across this landscape um you saw up at bila what it was like the beautiful but rugged um and that you know would you ever attempt at building a railway out here given the tools that they had look at that stone absolutely beautiful beautiful stone and how i always ask the question you know how deep do you have to go how deep do these stanchions have to go into the ground before you know you get a good footing um absolutely incredible and then you know building it all year round and moving these massive blocks of stone here to achieve this massive thing i just think to myself how deep do these things go and they were the first men that come along to this valley with a pick and a shovel and went right we'll start digging here just it's beyond me these places are beyond me the engineering involved and the feat of human endurance to get this done not only from the engineer that designed it but the people the men that came along and the men and women that came along and built it it is beyond me sometimes honestly now believe it or not it was built as a single track viaduct and later it was widened so not only did they build it out here in the middle of nowhere they then decided to widen it's a double track and they put some cast iron refuges in up top which i'll show you in a moment but looking up there now i can just about see the join where they've widened it i'll show you now podgirl viaduct opened in 1861. it's 466 foot long it's 84 foot high and it has 11 arches and like i say originally built single track but it was about 30 odd years later they decided to widen it so in um september 1889 the go-ahead was given to widen it and here is a picture of the widening work taking place this is a picture of a picture that you can look at down by the viaduct on an information board but let's just take a look at this now i'm sorry for the poor quality of this but like i said it's a picture of a picture uh i've tried to enhance it a bit but you can see they've built a wooden railway alongside of the uh the viaduct um and the widening work is taking place they've got a steam crane there lifting the blocks of limestone absolutely fascinating and if you look very closely you can see the men the uh the guys in the white aprons were stone masons and then you've got a man in a bowler hat and he's the foreman apparently and while we're here you've got to do the compulsory let's look over the edge of the viaduct don't look down or do look down there you go beautiful valley there i'll try and find out what that little river is for you but a stunning place and stunning for a walk particularly now this time of year in uh in autumn but the only way to really appreciate this viaduct is to send the flying camera off the edge [Music] [Music] [Music] now these stunning structures podgill mary gill and smardale viaduct are looked after by the northern viaducts trust this is their uh website and you can go along you can read more about the the viaducts and you can even make a donation because you can imagine the cost of the upkeep of these things so that's just some more information if you care to go and take a look so there you go i hope you've enjoyed the video a strange railway line out in the middle of nowhere and i came up mainly to look at the belar viaduct and darren ported these extra two viaducts out to me so thank you very much for that so i hope you enjoyed the video a railway line not done one for a while and a railway line out in the middle of nowhere i'm gonna go we're gonna get a brew now hopefully hopefully get a brew and probably head back to manchester it's a long drive back uh but fortunately weather's been all right even though it rained a bit and it's still light anyway i'm going on now thank you very much for watching hope you enjoyed the video take care i shall see you in the next one bye for now [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Martin Zero

Views: 112,218

Rating: 4.9362922 out of 5

Keywords: Belah Viaduct, Stainmore line, Barnard castle to Tebay line, disused railway line, abandoned signal box, British Railway architecture, British railway engineering, Disused railway urbex, Podgill viaduct, Merrygill viaduct, Cumbrian railways, Cast Iron bridge, Iron bridge, Martin Zero

Id: ll99tzjJKVE

Length: 32min 31sec (1951 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020