 I'm on the central line today and I'm going right out to the end to Epping. I don't come up here that often but I always enjoy a trip because as you can see we're kind of traveling through pretty much open countryside so it's quite an attractive part of the London Underground from that side it's might go for a walk up there on that hill one there that's quite a nice place to watch for your trains. So you probably gather the reason we're going right to the end of the central line is because we're going to the Epping Ongar Railway which I haven't been to for a while I've called in a couple of times I went on it back in about 2005 when it was a DMU and it had the finished steam loco so I haven't had a chance to ride on it since then so that's what we're going to today. This section of tube line though was originally a railway line which goes under the M25 this is the only tube line that goes under the M25 the only other underground line to go on the M25 is the metro port and once you get past Epping. So the section of line we're traveling on now was opened by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1865 and the terminus was Epping and then its successor the Great Eastern Railway extended the line to Ongar in 1865 sorry this line opened in 1856 and extended to Ongar in 1865 and the Ongar Railway although it kind of carried on was always sort of seen as a bit of a branch and then eventually it became part of London Underground in 1949 I'm pretty sure it was but what happened was the good yards stayed open so steam trains would have still worked along here up until about 1966 they might have become diesel towards the end but probably been at normal now just going to look out here there's a glimpsed London Underground node and it wasn't yellow when I asked and they painted it yellow so it's coming into Epping the Ongar branch would have carried on just beyond the station up there so we won't get to travel on those 100 or so yards of track but we're going to travel on as much of the Epping Ongar Railway as we can so here we are we've arrived at Epping so what happened was once the um so I'll just show you now if you look up here you can see they've put like stops in so trains don't actually ever now go beyond there but beyond the bridge the line to the left is Reverse Diving the line to the right going up the hill that is the old Ongar branch so not particularly so very occasionally trains have still traversed on and off the Ongar branch when they've when they took the preserved stock that used to work on the branch up until it's closed so it closed to public in 1994 it was electrified I think it's about 57 prior to the electrification this line was electrified but prior to the electrification of the Ongar branch London Underground had to hire a steam train from British Rail so steam would have worked through here up until up into the 50s now this station is a bit of an unusual one because there is an entrance there but I don't think it's ever open so this lattice footbridge is inside the ticket marries but the concrete footbridge there is outside the ticket marriage so standing up here we get a nice view of the station so occasionally trains do come in here at busier times I won't go down there because station staff are already looking at me thinking what's he doing on that footbridge so what we need to do now is get out we need to find a bus not only those buses there's a bus that's going to take us to the Epping Ongar Railway so let's go and see where that is so we've got to get out the station first so here's my ticket I've got a travel card I like my travel card because I can get on and off the stations as I wish if I want to just go on the station to look at trains it works it doesn't work with an oyster card so here we are here so as we come out the station now I'm out through the ticket office the bus to take us to the Epping Ongar Railway is due to arrive here so I've just got to wait now for the bus to arrive one and then I'm going to walk across the road so you can see the station building so it'll be quite an interesting day I think they're running a few different trains on the Epping Ongar Railway so I'm looking forward to it so once the bus has arrived and taken us there I'll show you what we see on the Epping Ongar Railway but there we are there's Epping Ongar station so everyone on the bus will take a bit yeah I know who they are now traveling just travel through later north wheel to bought my ticket so this ticket is for the bus and for both trains they're running on the Epping Ongar Railway it's quite scenic out there quite attractive bit of common land so wherever we've come here on the central line which is part of London Underground we are actually out in Essex now we're no longer in Greater London so when you travel to the Epping Ongar Railway by train obviously you go up to Epping like I've done today and then you get this bus so you kind of get the best of both you get a pleasant vintage bus journey through Essex and then you get a train journey when you get to Northwield so I think it's going to be very interesting there so we've arrived at Northwield we actually arrived on the other bus but I went and had a look in the shop and the other bus drove off so when there's two buses out you can hear won't be able to see it being here aeroplanes that's because we are very close to Northwield airfield so there's the gift shop there now it's looking quite exciting I can already see steam in the distance there's that class 37 about where that is there is a little industrial loco built by Hawthorne Leslie called Isabel and she's going to take us for a break van ride up into Epping Forest so we arrive here this is the main part of the station that way is looking towards Ongar signal box and we have a class 47 which I'm really looking forward to arrive behind because that's going to be a winning loco for me so um we just have a walk up here so this is a class 47 with the grape rice lobby on the side so that is the livery of the class 47 which works in Scotland so we're going to have a trip on that later but first we're going to have a a break van ride in this shark break van behind this Hawthorne Leslie locomotive Isabel so I'm really looking forward to this it's a winning loco for me it's also the second locomotive of the year I've had called Isabel the other one was at the Amerton Railway two-foot gauge loco now let's just have another we'll go around that side have a better look at Isabel shows this is part of London Underground in my lifetime how rural it is it's all fields beyond there just beyond the end of the platform was the only public level crossing on the London Underground it was a bridal path which goes off up into the fields there's some more stock up there we'll go and have a look at that a bit later and there's a mark to carriage in Anglia Railways livery of Buffet so I might go and get a cup of tea there later let's go through here you better look at the break van so this is there sitting here and have a cup of tea it's a I just said it's a mark to Buffet so this would have worked between London Liverpool Street and Norwich and the trains were replaced and the mark 3 is there about to be replaced by the Stadler Flirt unit so here's a shark break van I know I did show you this the moment they go but I'll show you again because here we get a bit of even if you look down there that is a ballast plow so when they're dropping ballast that goes down and that pushes the ballast off the rails and into the area between the sleepers so let's just have a look at here's the bell again she was built in 1919 I just read that literally off the work plate and as you can see she's 100 years old still going strong so she's taking people up the hill up there over to the other side of the M11 into our effing forest so we're going to go for a ride on her now getting ready for tomorrow I'm not going to be here tomorrow but for those you visit row tomorrow they're going to be lucky enough to have a trip behind I haven't had pictures at all I had her on the main line between Schupf on Avon and and it's also an oak reach under behind her and there's this plaster it's down here I have to come to one of their diesel events to get that logo for haul if so it's now time for us to go and enjoy our break van ride into the forest um it's a bit cold on the way back but then it is winter so I can't complain I do like a driver's eye view I'll upload that as a separate video from Cooper sale this will handle it just up in the forest back to here so look out for that there'll be another video a driver's eye view from Cooper sale to Northwield in the shark break van I'm now as you can see I'm on a more conventional passenger train sitting in a mark two carriage it's class first you want on the front and it's going to take us up beyond Cooper sale up as close as the railway can go to the boundary with London Underground so looking forward to that so that will be beyond Cooper sale will be a little bit of new track for me and then after that the 47 that we saw when we arrived here is going to take train all the way down to Onga so I'll show you Onga station so when we get to Epping Forest I'll just give you like a view like this out the window so you can see what there is um there's no station so we won't be getting out and then um we'll have a look around the rest of the place and as it has just been Christmas is still beautifully decorated with Christmas decorations so um yeah time for me to have a bit of a diesel bash we've had a steam ride as well though which so it's been a great day so far this is as far as we're going I believe we're quite close to the station um Epping underground station not sure exactly how close but we're at the limit we can go so that's the view on that side just see some houses in the distance if you look over here show you out the window you can see it's all you know fields etc and um looking that way see the whole train so we're now going to travel the 47s holding us we're going to travel behind the 47 all the way down to Onga so now we've got half a half an hour's ride sitting in a marked two coach behind the diesel reminds me a bit of the days when the 47s still work across country trains remember sitting in a train hauled by class 47 and mark twos although they were the air conditions are rather than these ones where you can open the window so yeah we're now going to Onga always enjoy um when you get a drop like window you have to put your hand out like this and open the window not many trains you can do it now so here we are this is Onga station there's the signal box just there there's some carriages here there's an old um seven emu carriage and there's some mark ones here under restoration it's going to have a look at the loco so we've come on the 47 the 31 took us up to near Epping station and the 47 was on the rear and has hauled the train all the way to Onga we left the 31 behind at um northwild so there's a bit of the yard there quite a few carriages awaiting restoration this carriage is a mark one this was the only mark one carriage in our train the rest were there were two blue and gray mark twos and there's um a mark two brake carriage so this is where the old good yard would have been if we go up here past the ticket office we can go and have a look at the at the loco there's the sports here here we are i know we saw her earlier on at um and northwild all train is authentic memory of childhood something but 47's work in the cross country trains with a lot of mark twos so she will run around her train and then um um we will go back to northwild i'm just going to show you something up here there's a couple of other things on display um well i'll do videos in main and europe i sometimes we go to a railway station we find the plinth loco plinth locos don't really exist so much in britain well they do exist but they're rare but here's one here plinth diesel loco i mean in britain i think the main reason they don't exist is a lot of them i looked after and kept running but here's a plinth loco so maybe one day it's like i'll run again it's a little industrial diesel so it's um here quite a nice little gate garden so 47's are going to run around her train she's going to come like literally right up to where we are now so i'm going to let you watch that quite a tight run round look they've got there but they're still some track just there the 47 will go around to the other end of the train they'll take us back to northwild so i shall let you see that judgment here the one in the orange jacket these now are going to change the points so the next train the point is at the next train so we're going to have a wander around we're going to get back on the train we're just going back to northwild back down on the platform a couple of things i want to show you so a moment ago we were up there there's the plinth loco this railway is possibly unique in that it is measured in kilometers and mile posts so all railways when they were built in this country were always built in miles so it has mile posts which are done from liverpool street so just before northwild station you've got mile post 19 i'm not quite sure which mile what the nearest mile poster here would be but probably around mile post 22 maybe but when it came part of the underground it was measured in kilometers and they start here see just there that zero zero that is kilometer post zero and then it's measured in kilometers that way all the way down the whole central line even today the central line is measured in kilometers from ongar rather than from epink so you go that way the kilometer posts kilometers are going up come and coming this way the miles are going up so as we go that way the miles are going down and vice versa and another thing that happened here a loco once ran away and hit the buffers in 1934 as you can see there's a picture of the derailed loco must and yeah bit of an incident happened and there's the rescue operation so let's hope nothing like that ever happens here or anywhere else that matter again right i think i really ought to go and get back on the train because soon the train will leave for northwild but yeah what a lovely country station this is and it's hard to believe even in my lifetime this will part london the ground network it's so scenic when you're between here you know very rural it just doesn't seem like london underground even more rural say than the metropolitan line beyond rickman's worth so right time to get back on train so here we are we're back at northwild we had a very interesting trip up and down the line behind class 47 as carriages are there the loco has now been uncoupled running around ready to take the train back up to ongar it's nice you have northwild station building and i really wish i could have come here though when it was still part london underground it must have been there was just one track through here and the lattice footbridge you see today there was a concrete one which i think had concrete cancer and unfortunately had to be demolished which had been replaced with this one which probably gives it more of the feeling of how the station would have been in its pre-london underground days now here this was the only level crossing public level crossing on the london underground it's not even for roads it's a bridal path you can see it says sign there says public bridal way it goes off into the countryside but as i said i'd like to have seen it here in the days when it was still part london underground well i've sort of got my wish come true london underground train here which is really nice to see just to give that nod to the fact that it was part of london underground network also here something completely different another industrial tankage and i think it's another one built by hawthorne leslie so it's like a larger cousin of isabel who was working the breakdown lines and there's a few other interesting things up there you can probably just see the fumper sitting there number 205 205 there's also a peak class 20 and another dmu i'm going to now cross what was the only public level crossing on the underground because it goes this way there is also a public footpath further up the line so yeah let's cross the track and get a better view of the london underground carriage and you can see the carriages there and the dmu's just beyond the trees so um i'm now going to find my way around to the front of the station to get the bus back to epping and head back to central london so it's been a really great day really enjoyed it here epingongar railway um i've to come back and have a gala on perhaps so um there's the bus oh there's the 47 um and there is a bus as well so yeah looks like my bus is here so from class 47 to the bus it's um time for me to go so yeah thank you very much to epingongar railway it's been a great day really enjoyed it and if you ever you know in london and you want to come out jump on the central line you can get the bus to come here so you don't even need to take your car you can have a great day out on the epingongar railway so thank you very much for watching please do feel free to comment like subscribe tell your friends etc and goodbye