 Hello, thank you for joining me. Today I'm standing on a bridge over Shire's Ditch. This is a little river which comes off the Fraser River, which in turn comes off the River Colm. We're about three-quarters of a mile away from Uxbridge Town Centre and just along over there is an old railway line. What we're going to do today, we're going to, well firstly we're going to walk along this boardwalk. We're going to go into Uxbridge and we're going to go and look at all the lost stations that once served this town because currently Uxbridge only has one station and that is the Metropolitan lines Uxbridge branch from Harrow on the Hill. But there have been various other stations which have come and gone so we're going to walk around Uxbridge and we're going to go and find the sites of those stations. So we just get through to here. Now you can see here the footpath goes under a bridge under the old railway line to Uxbridge High Street. So what I'm going to do though, I'm going to go round here. There's a little gate here and we'll go up some steps and that will take us on to the trackbed. So we go along here. It seems to be a bit of a nature reserve. That was the official public footpath where we were on a moment ago. Up these steps onto what is quite a low embankment and then we'll be on the actual trackbed itself. So when we get up to here you can see you can't really easily go any further. I could if I wanted to scramble through the bushes. I did do that a few years ago. I'm not doing that today. I'm going to follow the railway this way towards where Uxbridge High Street station was and I just tripped into a hole. So about a mile that way is the Chiltern Main Line. So there had been a triangular junction between Denham and West Rice. The Chiltern Main Line opened in 1906. This was added in 1907 and Uxbridge High Street station opened and closed to passengers a few times. It eventually closed completely to freight in 1964. What I'll do I'll put a thing on screen now telling you all the openings and closings of Uxbridge High Street. So it's got a fairly complex history. So what I'm going to do now I'm going to keep following this footpath until we get to the site of where the railway station once stood and then once we've seen that we'll go and hunt down some other sites of former railway lines and maybe the odd current railway line around Uxbridge. I'm just getting a little bit closer to Uxbridge. Now just down there you can't really see it because of all the trees and bushes is the river phrase which as I said comes off of a conch. Look at that. It's interesting there's some old rail here. In fact I think I know what this is. This where it's been tipped on its side. To me that is the base of a set of points. So that's where the rail would have moved. That's quite interesting to think that that survived here. I think that they've been last used in about 1964. Still here now. That's an impressive little survivor. I wasn't expecting that. The embankment has widened out a bit here. So I'm not sure exactly how to look but I imagine from it had been a single track. It might have been double track if anyone does want to comment and confirm if it was double or single. But from here it looks like there probably was double track and we obviously know there were some points for the various shunting and everything that would have gone on. So yeah quite quite an unexpected discovery there. I'm just going to keep going now. We're still a little way from Uxbridge but I'm going to walk along as much as I can while it's a footpath. So I'll show you where the footpath ends and we have to find another way to find our way to Uxbridge High Street. Well the footpath I've been walking along seems to have drifted off the track bed. You can just see there's the low embankment. It does make me wonder though it drifted off so gently over there. That's where Samderson's was. They made material. There'd have been other factories now it's all a business part. Whether there was possibly some sidings into what would have been a very industrial area. I'm not entirely sure on that one. So if anyone knows wants to comment tell me was there any sidings there or is it just a sort of gentle soap off. Please do. So we come to here you can see we're now going back up to the level of the track bed. There's um so it's what is it Hartfordshire Middlesex Wildlife Trust and it's Uxbridge Aldergate Nature Reserve. So they're taking care of the section of track bed. So this is we're back on the bank now and as you can see what happens here it becomes a housing estate. So I'm going to walk on through this housing estate until we come to the site of where Uxbridge High Street station would have been. So we've kind of gone from one extreme of an old railway to another. So we've reached the site of Uxbridge High Street station. That's the river Freys down there. It would have been about just over there where this building is. So this is part of Buck's new uni. This has been built on the site. We're just coming up towards Uxbridge High Street itself. So when we get to here this road which is now a dead end if you go that way because into the housing estate that is the Uxbridge High Street. And as you can see looking this way they've put a modern road going around the you know the bypass round the oldest part of the town. So this building here this is where the station would have been. It would have probably been about there. And what happened was there was a bridge. It was on a viaduct by then. There was a station building underneath the bridge and the bridge ended probably about midway there in the road. Now the reason they built a bridge was because it was intended not to be a through station. We shall fairly soon we'll go and see the site of Uxbridge Vine Street station and the plan was to link the two together but it never happened. Had that happened you never know it might have survived because it would provide quite a useful link to bypass London. So if you're coming down from High Wickham and you wanted to get to Heathrow Airport but unfortunately that didn't happen. So we get to here. I think the ticket office would have been around here somewhere. The bridge would have gone out ended there and you'd have bought your ticket you'd have come along here somewhere and you'd have gone up a set of steps up to where the one platform is. So yeah not a lot to see really now just an office block but this is the site of Uxbridge High Street. One other thing it really is nothing to do with the railway but I'm going to show you because it's quite interesting. Is that building there it's built to look like an ocean liner which I've always found quite fascinating and that pub on the other side of the road that's one of the oldest buildings in Uxbridge. What I'm going to do now I'm going to head into Uxbridge Town Centre and we're going to go and find our second lost railway station of Uxbridge. I've just walked through Uxbridge Town Centre I'm now walking up Belmont Road because this is where we find our second lost station of Uxbridge it was called Uxbridge Belmont Road that's a bit of an unusual one because it was determinous of the branch from Harrow on the Hill the Metropolitan Line branch Harrow on the Hill and of course that branch still is here today but the station has been relocated I'll get onto that in a moment we look across here Sainsbury's Car Park this is where Uxbridge Belmont Road would have once stood. Now you can just see there there is an s-stop train in Uxbridge sidings the Metropolitan Line now dives down behind those sidings into the current Uxbridge station so the station that would have been here it opened in 1904 it was steam hauled originally for the first few months and then in 1905 it became electric they have of course on a few times returned steam to the Uxbridge branch with steam on the Met so I have done a steam train on the Uxbridge branch it closed in 1938 when they built the current Uxbridge station so it's the shortest live station it had been a similar style to Rhyslip station which we went to when we went to Rhyslip Lido Railway I'll put a link to that video on the screen now so if you have a look at that video give you an idea what Uxbridge Belmont Road would look like I'm now going to head round over there to um although this is Lost Stations of Uxbridge for the sake of it we might as well go and walk through the current one and only station in Uxbridge I'm now just walking through Uxbridge bus station and we're going to go through the current Uxbridge station which is just over there so not going on any trains we're literally just going to walk across the concourse and out onto the high street so here we have Uxbridge station this is what opened in 1938 it replaced Belmont Road where we've just been so this would never have been served by steam it only ever had steam on a couple of occasions in preservation so I'll just let you see that so you get barriers an S-stop train which you can't see it's already there we go there's the S-stop train one thing I really like about this station well firstly it's brutalist it would almost be like a 1930s church it's brutalist style and it's got these lovely stained glass windows here so I really I really like this station now if you get on the Piccadilly Line and go all the way to Cockfosters they've got a very similar station so you can actually get on a station like this and travel to its twin sister so yeah I really I think this is a really nice bit of London Transport architecture what we're going to do now we're going to go out onto the high street we've got one more station in the town centre to look at and and then we've got one more slightly further away to look at so come over here the high street so yeah really nice you can see this curved shape that was so when trolleybuses they used to terminate on on a circle here so anyway I'm going to now walk off down towards our next one which was Uxbridge Vine Street Vine Street the street that gave Uxbridge very first railway station its name the road you see along here this is still the main high street we're going to go down Vine Street which is this road here it was always exciting to go inside it was very much like being in are you being served it was so old-fashioned and it was just great and it's you know a really nice art deco building unfortunately closed it looks like it's all been rebuilt the end bit down there has been demolished and they're building a more modern building because I believe only this section here is listed and there's a model of it at Beckinscott model village so if you have a look at this video coming on screen now you'll be able to see that so you can see how they're building an extension here if we look at this picture here so there's going to be this is a building apart there's no coming see an old picture of Randalls and you can see some older buildings there so they would have been demolished and an extension in a similar style to the original art deco would have been built that's now been demolished because because it was a later addition it wasn't listed and we're just going to go down here now to where Uxbridge Vine Street station was where this building was more on the corner down there there was a pub um the name has slipped my mind but i'll put it on screen here was where the local press office would have been and just there coming to it now where there's a rather modern office block that is where Uxbridge Vine Street station would have been it was the first railway station to open up which opened in 1856 close to passengers in 1962 closed to goods in 1964 so it would have been well the ticket office would have been somewhere here on the road that's the main bypass block because of course that wouldn't have been there because all the traffic would have gone along the high street so the vine had originally had um a roof like you get it i'm trying to think of a station that's still got one a great western overall roof a bit like kings where down on the plainton and dartmouth railway i've had a roof like that that was later taken down there'd have been a good yard probably about where the road is now and i do actually remember what i never ever remember seeing trains here as a child it was a car park and i vaguely remember seeing the platforms were still there the track bed has pretty much been obliterated by housing and roads in that direction but what i'm going to do i'm going to walk down there because i want to show you the site of cowley station that's the other station in Uxbridge so i'm going to work my way off down there somewhere and um let's go and find a site of cowley station i'm about halfway now between Uxbridge and Cowley stations i'm in the cuttings so the track would have been about where i am i like how the cutting has found the modern use because if you look there's garages on each side and up there are houses so the houses are at the natural ground level and the garages upload them i'll be able to show you by seeing these bridges we've got we'll go up here fortunately the bridges aren't high enough to accommodate any trains if they're ever reopened but i don't think it ever will one thing i want to show you is these bricks they might look fairly normal but they're actually bigger they're taller these are a modular brick they were a metric brick that was bought out but they were never very successful so you don't see modular bricks that often but here we have an estate which is all modular bricks so if we come to here and if you look that way you can see the bridges going along there the railway would have carried on i'm going to carry on down there until we get to Cowley station i've just come out of that housing estate you can clearly see the cutting which would have once carried the railway it's been filled in from here and there's a few trees planted where the railway line would have been the road which runs along there that would have always been there when the railway was here but it's what happens here that's i find quite interesting you've got another road crossing you can see there's a hump which if you didn't know there'd once been a railway here you might think why is there this sort of hump which the bus is just about to go over so this bus is now crossing where a railway bridge would have been so that's why there is this hump the railway line would have carried on beyond that corner for head so i'm going to carry on down there and soon we should be at the site of Cowley railway station this is a rather unusual bit of old railway it seems to have become a pond in front of brunel university so looking that way that's looking towards us so there would have been a cutting but it's been completely filled in i don't suppose this pond goes down to the level of the track but i suspect they filled it in and then they've put this pond in afterwards but we're heading for just over there where those trees are i have a feeling there might still be something of the cutting which i'm hoping to go down and get to you know track level again this little duckling there swing off into the pond and i'm not sure about that but let's let's have a look so i just thought this was quite an unusual bit of old railway the fact it's new from brunel university so i'm going to probably carry on along the road but i believe in there um that's where the cutting of the old railway is if you look over there you've got the brutalist concrete jungle of the brunel university well after showing you the pond my plan had been to walk along the road along there but just as i was going i'd call something out the corner of my eye now remember this is brunel university so there's you know it's obvious who it's named after it's named after the great is and barred kingdom brunel and um to sort of highlight that there's a section of one of brunel's bridges here this comes from one of the bridges over the river why it chips those they've bought this section here they've plinthed it for people to see so there's a bit of brunel's work at brunel's university now the other exciting thing to do with this railway um well it ran along the cutting is still there on the other side of the fence now unfortunately we can't get in i have been in here before so my plan had been to take you in and show you but um the gate there's a gate here just goes down to cutting is locked i'm going to show you over the gate have a look down there you're not imagining it you can see brunel's broad gauge track i think as part of an art project someone has decided to lay some broad gauge track on the old railway so it's nice to see that he's actually still track on this line even if it doesn't carry a train as far as i'm aware this railway never was broad gauge i believe it only ever was standard gauge but as it runs right past brunel's university it's real shame it it doesn't still exist because you know the railway would serve the university cannelly station was and i'll keep saying we're nearly at cannelly station we are now it's just down there um so you know students could use it they could jump on the train go on stop into uxbridge or they could go that way to west straight and when they get trained to london or the west country so yeah it's real shame the way it's not here anyway i'm going to now go out there walk along the road we're going to go and find cannelly station and finally we are now coming to the site of cannelly station so the railway track bed is just down the other side of the road in that cutting it's the most uninterrupted section of track bed it's the same bit just up there where we were having a look at the section of raw gauge track bed laid we get to here now you can see there's another hump in the road as the bus is quite clearly showing that so where the bus is now that is going over the old railway bridge across the road so you can quite clearly see this very unnatural hump we have here the station would have been just down there we will go down there in the moment i just want to show you something here so if we stand on the old bridge we on the ground here at these bricks these look very much of railway origin and i'm not entirely sure this is there's some kind of metal bar running all the way across i don't think it's an old section of track but it looks to me very much like it's of railway origin so there's now houses on the site of cannelly station we're looking that way that's looking towards uxbridge along the track bed what i'm going to do now i'm going to go down this cycle path so we can be roughly where the platforms would have been so there had just been two platforms there was no goods facilities here it was just you know it was the only intermediate station on the branch the next station would have been west raster which of course is still open the bay platform is still there and it was also the bay for the stains west branch um that's something we have to do another day at some point in the future i would like to do the stains west branch because that's quite an interesting branch and parts of it are still open for freight so that's quite a fascinating branch but that's for another day and but the the bay platform is still there so you you you know you can still see that when you get to west raton so here we are this area here another housing state similar to what we found at uxbridge high street this is the site of cannelly station i should think where i'm standing now this is probably where the two tracks would have been the platforms would have probably been about each side of the road so from the site of cowley station i hope you enjoyed joining me and looking for the lost stations of uxbridge thank you very much for watching please do feel free to like subscribe comment thank you very much goodbye