What do we find at this Abandoned Railway in Scotland?

four stupid game stupid ball stupid stick things who would ever play this thing uh there he is oh there's railway running through this golf course there's a railway that goes that way and the railway that goes that way and up there it looks like the path going through the undergrowth so ain't that anymore let's go and explore this has not been used for some time all of the the flange ways back there are filled up and the sleepless look a little bit knackered and we have some stuff growing in it it definitely goes up there and there's a gap up ahead that it goes through now this is two foot cage i'm pretty sure but i'm almost certain it's two foot gauge and it appears to be abandoned i mean there's a lot of rust built up over these rails so nothing has run along this in some time now i actually know where this goes how long this is i mean this could just end at where the uh the path is because i can't see the railways anymore and that could be totally overgrown now something like this though is quite exciting as a railway enthusiast finding a railway that's abandoned is always quite exciting and finding one that you didn't expect to find and that's even more and there's obviously one thing that one has to do if one finds an abandoned railway that's go for a walk and find out where it goes because you don't know what you might find generally it's nothing you just go for a bit more and go with a bit of history but we always dream that we might find something like you know a wagon a locomotive or a building so it's getting a bit thick in fact if you've stumbled across this bit here you would never even know there was a railway at all as the grass and the nettles and everything grow up around it and occasionally underfoot i can just feel a sleeper and occasionally get a little bit of rail just pop through but it's all very very well camouflaged very camouflaged indeed now this is clearly not very well looked after because the is this is all rotten i can feel its rush and there's grass grown in it and a big problem we have with wooden sleepers is that you have the ballast around it to help the drainage so that the sleepers that your wooden don't sit in water here they seem to be surrounded by grass and soil so they will have totally 100 sat in water which is not a particularly good way for them to be so rotten and if anything ever to run here again at least carrying passengers it will probably need replacing it's quite thick now it's a totally different kind of kind of leak to say explorers who are finding america and going into the amazon but for me this is kind of like the same level exploring and finding a railway especially around where it actually goes for some distance because i thought this was going to end as soon as it hit these bushes but here we go as a little boy there are lots of stories including like the famous railway series books that involve finding railways and find the locomotives and it's always been that dream of mine to end up finding a railway so to be here now that have that little boy inside of me going what might we find the answer is a lot more real than actually thought it was going to be i thought this is going to be quite short but it keeps on going oh what we have up ahead is well apparently all railway what else do we find spiky it's a check rail here we've got two rails here so this could have been a crossing or perhaps a curve i'm not really sure it's all very overgrown still this has been much maybe an eighth of a mile of track so far and it's all very abandoned oh it goes what's up here there's points up ahead here okay first round oh no i thought this was a point no this is a crossing out of the ample another level crossing here which has not been used in obviously when the flanges come through this they would cut a groove so there's been stuff moving over here but nothing through here for a while because they've just filled the sides up you would never know there's a railway disappearing off there but obviously someone's used behind us as a footpath that's kind of a groove but through there you never know there was a railroad the size of the thorns on that the railway disappears into just a spinny of trees oh that it works all that hugely enthused oh there's a station oh i'm gonna hop a fence i thought this looked oh god that looks really sketchy oh there's no metal this i don't know how i'm getting back over there oh well oh what do we have here that's the most interesting thing is we have found a train their skip wagons of what's been put on them is hideous and it looks like they're made for a child's play area but underneath that's a skip wagon that might be a skip wagon or a ammunition wagon base i don't know it's a long skit bag and the wheels further apart don't know definitely skip wagon and we're at the alfred valley railway and this this is strange oh i know what this is this is a lister a lister loco oh with an exposed gearbox know this well clearly that has not run in some time that's evidence so this i think was put aside looking at it because the track's not connected there to be some kind of child's play area thing what we do have is quite a nice looking track oh this looks quite good overview of what we got here so this looks like this used to be a mainline platform a standard gauge full-size route and a railway has come in the navigator always come in to use the same facilities and this all looks actually in remarkably nice condition you got yeah slightly forgotten about unkempt maybe but everything's you know we've got grass growing weeds growing on the side everything on here looks really nice oh in fact look at this we've still got the chalkboard on the side but when the trains were last running it doesn't say when it was just says first trains was 12th last train's four climbs to the park so it ran to the park so this is obviously one end of the line oh well there's a little station office there there everything's locked i suppose that makes sense and the railway carries on oh oh i thought that was the end i thought that's just a run-around loop but the railway seems like cursed under i've never seen this done on a railway before this is a swimming pool steps so what's happened here is the track bed has been raised up to take a narrow gauge railway so let's go along here i wonder what's further up this line generally if it's just a headshot the line will be straight it won't curve around the bushes which are over there so let's go further into the undergrowth and see what we can find oh this is all the remains of some infrastructure i'm not sure what looks vaguely like in fact oh [Music] this curves around this is a turntable you can just see a stone bed that would have been the edge yes this would have been a that's a turntable pit so this would have been a station with a turntable not a big turntable for big engines but still i turned over nonetheless and there's another point here i want to see if this works does this work it did not it wants to work for the links loose never mind another point there this is a retaining wall so this would have been a turntable oh oh there's a shed oh it does oh more working track i love these kind of points with the weight so this is the point to a shed oh wow it's more pointless where does this go nope nothing oh that's really weird we've gone from being relatively heavy rail there to super lightweight plate rail here oh this is totally over and nothing's been up here oh it's a wagon just with some rail on it i imagine this has been here this looks like it's been hit oh oh it moves i'll work push it oh there's too much rolling resistance from stuff oh it's not rolling since it's uphill no wonder it's one of the wonderful things about railways it's got so much weight that generally it will still run through this i'll let that roll away i wonder if he's actually sunk down into a lip that's right there's a shed that everything's dark and it's all mixed up if there's any way we can get in [Music] oh hello lights in here there's no chassis record no way that is something else i did not expect likes to work in here this is a replica well rebuild poison it's an allen keith so this is going to be relatively modern in fact plate says it's 2001 so that's actually quite new and it's a replica imitations you mentioned it's got rods on the side with fake cylinders and pistons nice big brass dome as a railroad enthusiast i look at this and think it's a little bit of an abomination it's a nicely done abomination but it's not something that i'd get excited about we'll come here that's uh frankly a lie that's not gonna work so um obviously this was made for the alfred valley line she's called james gordon and that's frankly all i can tell you i don't know much about allen keys apart from they've made quite a few engines for things like this what on earth is that that's that is quite horrendous this is i don't even have an idea these frames look like a simpler oh it is the simplex controls uh this is a motorail simplex like the ones i've reviewed previously on the channel and i suspect rather that this came about by somebody saying i'd like you to make a steam engine case for my locomotive and whoever's making it went sure what does that look like and they went well it's got a big round bit for a boiler and there's a chimney on top of that and there's another bit on top a bit like a small chimney and then it's got a whistle and they went i don't know about making a whistle i could make a belt and then yeah that would do and then ah i said but it's got kind of like things like cupboards on the side yeah i can make that and this is what they've come up with which is ah frankly hideous absolutely an abomination wow they their frames have cracked on that in a big way i mean those are some big welded patches on but i have never seen a crack like that on a on a locomotive that looks [Music] that was just a black hole full of gears and colts and drive shafts and weird things now things like that i think are weird and i don't like this i just think sad you've got a really nice simplex locomotive and you've just turned into something horrible i mean obviously it's very much for children but oh you've got a mirror on it so the driver can see what's going on the train that is that is nasty and then we've got this lot [Music] so i have no idea where these carriages came from at all this one looks quite nice the woodworking it looks pretty good it's got a fourth that one looks more that looks like the older coach this looks like a newer coach there's a lot of stuff in here there's a very much a smell of dampness in the air that's a steam pump [Music] i i have no words for this that's remarkable and remarkable in a very bad way i have that is two trailers of our car connectors on a piece of that's a very strange um apparently we've got air brakes linking everything so it was working as a trained and then what is this this looks like this used to be a tram at least it's a tram style it's that move the suspension on that is very not right that is very unpleasant deeply deeply unpleasant in fact that's beautiful then oh hello this is proper hidden away this is what my dreams have been made of finding something like this it's a little simplex little material simplex and it is it's absolutely filthy but it's how it should be it's been well kind of how it should be that is not a proper that window off the front looks like it's come with a bus i don't know much about buses but it definitely looks like a bus we've got a little slide right there this is very very strange these are not the right doors for this yes a little a little simplex this is all more or less as it should be it's got air tanks fitted to it or at least a compressor so you can make air brakes that's gorgeous what a lovely i have literally always dreamed of finding a shed like this and finding an abandoned locomotive and that right there he's even got the sanders still fitted these are quite uncomfortable on these things still so yeah we've reviewed a couple of things like this on the channel but this is this is dream level territory guys to find something like this abandoned right the back of so i don't i get the feeling that the two at the front were possibly the the ones that ran the service because they kind of painted up with the railways name this one at the back of the shed kind of almost feels like it was the works engine or if it was abandoned at the fact it's right to the back well we've got a door into oh that's a soft floor oh this is really eerie this doesn't feel like a railway that was closed down and they knew they were ending this feels like they told not to come back tomorrow there's manuals and instructions left out just everywhere this bend the bendix this is bendix something left out so everything's left out like this isn't a company that shut down this is people who are working on something one day and just didn't come back to work the tools aren't all put back you you kind of you know the the horror stories of people like in like chernobyl and other kind of places where there's been massive natural disasters and people just didn't come back this is the same kind of feeling obviously not as bad but it's got the same kind of spookiness to it of just everything was left in in situ that's really really strange i wonder i wonder if they weren't told they weren't coming back to work all right another weird couplings worn breaker linings brake shoes this is very strange i cannot believe the electricity works in here having left shed i've returned to the platform here at oxford now the original railway turned up here in 1859 which makes it a really early railway in the north of scotland and this ran until 1960 where it was shut down and disappeared the narrow gauge actually turned up in about 1980 and it started about a mile away in a park which is over that way somewhere and the railway eventually extent and came back to oxford in 1984 and then he continued to run a service all the way up to 2017 yes i know it doesn't look like it's only been shot for a few years but all of this can happen if you don't maintain and look after your railway it's amazing really and it's a little bit scary the main reason for it closing was a lack of manpower to stay on top of all the maintenance needed to keep something like this alive with closure being the only real option to the small band of volunteers which is a crying shame there's this lovely new station building different to the original as that was granite but there are no trains to serve it but all is not lost the alford valley community railway society has formed to try and save the railway here and they are going to try to recover all of this relay a lot of the track and return a service to the entire length of the line so if you'd like to see chains return here and to help out a fledging society to try and bring a railway back from the brink there's a link to their website so you can help make a real difference to the group and who knows if they do maybe i can come back and drive a train here thanks for watching guys let me know if you've enjoyed this adventure of me indulging my fantasy of finding a railway in the comments and if you enjoyed this how about clicking over here for one of my railway videos up here in scotland or down here for another one of our railway adventures thanks for watching and let's hope this railway can come back you

Channel: Lawrie's Mechanical Marvels

Views: 236,507

Keywords: Lawrie's, Mechanical, Marvels, LMM, Alford Community Railway, Alford Narrow Gauge Railway, Grampian Railway, Narrow guage, Alan Keef Locomotive, Steam Outline Locomotive, Motor Rail Simplex, Abandoned, forgotten railway, overgrown railway, abandoned train, old train shed, old locomotive shed, engine shed, walk around, explore, urban exploration

Id: xlBDGLLyoFQ

Length: 23min 23sec (1403 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2022