 Hello everything you're joining me, today we are at Preston, just come down to this end of the platforms where you've got the two basalas, that's looking towards London that way, that way it's looking towards Glasgow. The reason we've come to Preston today is to see what I think must be the only railway line in England that still has a section of track which runs along a public road, and that railway is the Preston Docks Probe, so where we have these two cath units pulling in now, I'll show you where the line leaves the west coast lane like, it's very easy to miss, see that concrete wall along there or fence, it disappears down there and sort of almost burrows down into a hole, what we'll have to do is go out the station and we'll go and try and see if we can see from a bridge looking down onto that railway, so it's the railway that goes to Preston Docks but it also has a preservation society, the Ribble Steam Railway who run steam trains up and down it, so we should be able to go and have a ride on this railway and there's also a rather interesting looking museum with lots of steam engines, so that's today's plan we're going to follow, we obviously can't travel on that section of line but we're going to follow what we can of that section of line and then we'll go for a ride where we can, so I've now got to find my way out Preston Station and we'll walk to the Preston Docks branch, so I've come down this side street now, this is where there's a Royal Mail depot, you can come here to collect parcels, so I could be coming to collect a parcel but I've actually just coming to collect a view of the railway line, so there is the Preston Docks branch down there, clearly no mistake in the railway station behind, I can just still see that 150 which we started off besides, so the train goes quite steeply down here when it goes down there, I believe they're bitumen tanks that go down to the Docks, usually hauled by a Kodas rail locomotive a few times a week, usually very early in the morning, so the steam train we're going to go on isn't going to run on this section, it will run further down into the Docks himself, if we have a look over here we shall should be able to see the railway, there we go, so yeah there's the railway curving off down there, so I'm going to walk along the side of this car park and then there should be a footpath into the next road where we should be able to see a bit more of the railway line, so it's quite an interesting route to a heritage line, if you were coming to this railway by train from Preston I'd probably suggest getting a bus down there because it is going to be a bit of a walk but you know I quite like a long walk and you probably wouldn't come this way you'd just carry on down the road down there, so as we go through this car park which currently has more bubblier in it than a few cars that are parked here, the railway line is running just behind there, so the bridge just up here so we should get a glimpse of the railway there, then I'm going to have to leave the railway again, this is probably the only bit at this point I can walk along beside the railway further on we should see a lot more of the of the track and then it goes through a tunnel just up here under the road so well I'll try and show that to you but I can't promise at this stage if I'm going to look through there you might be able to see put the camera through there's some some concrete buttresses, so it's a very sort of narrow subterranean railway at the moment it's gone right down into a narrow cutting in the ground so it really would be quite an exciting railway you know to travel on but I don't think whether the old railroad has ever been down here probably at some point so we're now in another street on this side you'd probably hardly know the railway there that is the walled railways down there let's have a look on this side might get a better view here if I put the camera over the wall maybe you can't see a lot you can just make out the track so track carries on in that direction I'm going to have to walk off around the corner and I'm going to try and find the tunnel I'll walk over the top of the tunnel and continue to see a bit more of the railway line that's where I am now at the other end of the tunnel this wall hides the tunnel at the other end so the tunnel has basically come from just over there where those trees are so what it's 150 yards or so but if we have a look here you get a better view of the railway through there you go there's the railway line there if we walk now slightly parallel well the railway is curving away from us but if you have a look here we finally get a decent view of railway infrastructure that's the tunnel which we've just walked over the top of so what I'm going to do now I'm going to continue to follow the railway now curves away from the road around there and I'm just going to keep going really till we actually find some trains I've now walked around another corner and in front of me here is the level crossing on the railway so we're following it from that way and see it says end of staff section so a quarter of a mile or so up there to the railway station at Preston the rails look shiny so it clearly has been used fairly recently but it does sort of look overgrown and almost bit disused you can see the signal is displaying a red it is switched on I'm not quite sure if those barriers are there for any reason obviously if a train came it'd have to move so across the road here so the section we're going to ride on I don't think it can be far away there's not a station this in because as I was coming around the corner I heard a whistle and I saw a plume of smoke from the steam locomotive so we can't be too far now there's two routes I could take both of which kind of followed the railway there's one that way which I think it's just over there must be the River Ribble so if I can get over there I could walk beside the River Ribble on one side and the railway on the other and I might try and do that now while the road is fairly quiet if I get across here quickly it's probably isn't where you're supposed to cross the road so if you come and do this walk don't cross the road this way hey that's just a level crossing and yeah this is the now on the cycle path crossing the railway and we get to here you can see the track in front of me that's like a head shunt so what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to go down there that way by the River Ribble but let's just have a quick look past these gates so you can see there's some lever frame there for the changing points so I think when we go on the train we're going to terminate just up there I've still got a good way to the other end first so I'm going to cross the crossing on one more time and find the River Ribble as I flow along the railway it's basically the other side of this hedge this footpath looked a bit like an old railway but I don't think it is because the railway is there and the River Ribble is just down now it's quite a nice bit where I was walking alongside the River Ribble I didn't record any of the video there because I was in a hurry by then I could see the end of the mark 1 carriage and I was trying to get ahead of the train now what happened was back there I heard I had got ahead of the train but the hedge was so big I couldn't see it I heard the steam locomotive puffing away so I found this little hole in the hedge and I got through and I was able to watch steam train pass by so here is that clip so that's what I've seen so far so I know which locomotive we've got out today here though I have a choice either dockside walk or riverside walk now here you get much better view of the railway railway runs parallel I can walk along this bank and see the train problem is I know the train's just gone that way so it's going to be a while so what I might do is go down across this crossing here and do the dockside walk so we can have a look at the docks and then hopefully we should get to the docks street running section around the time that the next train departs and then I should go on the next train after that so we get to the crossing says beware of the trains which we are you see that way there's definitely nothing coming that way because you know a train could have come down the branch off network rail but I think that's somewhat unlikely we'll get out here it's not just a stiff gate big good place no this would be another good place to stand and watch the train go past so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to continue with the dockside walk doesn't look like oh I see what happens it says dockside walk there's some modern houses here so I think if we go through well they're more flat actually rather than houses we go through this modern development I think the docks are just over there so from there we can then walk along till we get to where the railway line is so that's what we shall do as you may have guessed I've not actually been here before been to Preston station numerous times never actually left the station or they once go into the town centre actually might have to change trains or but that was the other side never been this way out the station before so it's completely new to me so as I do this video I'm seeing it all for the first time so here we go past all these dockside apartments everywhere and then we shall get to a gap just here between two blocks of apartments that's where I can see the water ahead of me so that'll be Preston Docks itself which looks to me to be a rather large area of water look at that very vast that is pretty big so here we are this is Preston Docks so I'm going to follow the dockside this way and up there is the section of line that runs along the public road I've come to the end of that rather large dock and found the railway line again just there a little level crossing there that's the interesting bit in front but these level crossing gates it's more than just a level crossing I suppose it kind of is a level crossing but it's the fact that the train actually now shares the bridge with the road traffic so here we have a railway with street running which is what I've come all this way to see it's um like I say it's pretty rare now in in the world let alone in the UK it's far as I'm aware it's the only place in England where a railway line you see it comes off the railway line and shares the same space as the road there are a few other places such as in Wales and Port Maddo the Welsh Highland Railway with its connection to the vestilio that runs along the street there's a couple in Ireland at Wexford the railway line runs right down the promenade although it doesn't actually share any space with any cars but it does run on the promenade and then um also if you go out to get a bus out to Dublin Port you'll see rails in the road a bit like this but there's two of them I was on the double decker bus one sitting at the front and I thought there's an old railway line in the road and suddenly an 07-1 class just came down the road um I'll find a picture and put that in now so that's a bit of British Isles UK street running in Germany you get it places like um in Dresden one of the narrow gauge lines there the hearts does it at one point so it's not unheard of and of course I haven't been there but the most famous one is the Mollivan in northern Germany narrow gauge railway runs down the street so it does happen but it's fairly rare these days so this is that's the big dock we were on and this is a swing bridge which goes out onto the River Ribble so not only is it a section of road and railway but this bridge where I'm standing now would actually swing into that area there to let the bigger boats and ships come through wait to see the Unix basically all of the train running down the road in place in England where you can still see a train running down the street what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go in that direction to the railway and ride the train myself I just want to show you this view here from the swing bridge looking up into Preston Docks you get quite a nice view you've got the whole skyline and that church there that's always worth pointing out because that is the tallest church spire in England not Cathedral because Salisbury Cathedral is tall but that's the tallest church spire in England so looking over Preston Docks I'm now going to go and find the railway and ride this bit track for myself well it's not far now to the railway and just go through this industrial estate to get to the station a couple of things I just thought I'd say about the railway how do we all look steam railway it was originally it was the preservation society were based our railway centre in the old steam shed at Southport so it's known as the Southport Railway Centre and unfortunately that shed was demolished and they built a supermarket on the site so the group with all their stock moved here to Preston Docks and this railway has been running since 2005 so in its current guys it's a fairly newcomer to the heritage railway world but always nice to see newcomers it's a bit different because like I say it's sharing tracks with a freight operation but as the freight operation isn't seven days a week and it's not weekends they can run quite nicely at weekends and the two operations don't sort of interfere with each other so I'm going to continue down through this industrial estate and I think when I get to the end of the road here I should find the railway so here we are come into the shop and then the railway is here there's also quite interesting looking museums I'll have a ride first and we'll look at that trains museum so go through here and there in front of us is the railway museum but we'll have a look around that later it's very exciting but I want to have a ride on the trains it's going quite soon but we'll come and see this so this is a rather large collection of industrial locos so we'll go through here and we shall catch the train and here we are sat down on the train waiting for a ride up the river steam runway and most importantly I'm looking forward to the section of line where we shall ride along the range what's the steam train on take us just there is the lever crossing we saw earlier when we walked here so the steam trains come to here the part I walked along is just there with someone who's walked past right now you probably see their legs so I just walked past you see the world so that's to give you an idea of how far we've come to so we're not going up there I thought it was a network rail line it would certainly make one have a rail tour if they could ever organize that's what I think's going to happen now is the steam locomotive is going to push the train to where there is a loop probably happening now because the whistle and then she'll run around the train there and then haul the train conventionally back to the railway station where we got on so we're going to go back now so we're now just coming back into where these loops are so what's going to happen now is the locomotive will run around the train so she's pushed us the quarter of an hour or so she'll run around the train and then we'll be hauled conventionally so the train has gone off for another trip up the line we all now have a look around the museums something to show you here there's all these bitumen tankers now these are what the railway is here for when it's not running the heritage line these go out onto the network rail there is a siding you can't see it from here but just around the corner where some more of them go to um have the bitumen pumped in and out I suppose so they will move at some point they're not part of the preservation scene the railway doesn't go much further that way just some buffer stops at the end of the line this is the museum station benches are nice very posh station benches there's a couple of um locos here waiting in west of waiting restoration see a saddle tank there's also a crane tank like they got foxfield earlier just there so maybe one day we'll come and they'll be running sort of see the bitumen how it's all sort of um poured down the side of the tank it must have spilled a bit anyway let's now go inside the station so it's it's a rather different to a usual heritage railway station it's not an old country branch line where there's a nice old station it's um all quite modern this station but then oh and I think it's got that thing it's quite nice it's got a few murals of industrial steam work it's got more down here so what we'll do we'll go around the museum when it's not too busy because most of the people have gone south a tonne there's another mural and then there's one more mural up here now let's go and see some similar locos to those on those murals let's go and have a look at this it's like the national railway museum of industrial locos in here it's it's pretty interesting so we come into here these are the doors we came in through from ticket office that way we had a brief look at that steam engine we're going to have another look so we go down here and here we have andrew barkley saddle tank there's a few of these in here so we'll see a few more then well i'm a better look when we're down at the um when we're down at low low levels here at platform level mark on mail carriage there which would be carried to raw mail if we have a look we can just glance inside the night rail plate and poems play so there you go that's the interior of the um of the mail carriage and that is well said that's the night mail time it gets to the bit where it goes past course from grass and moorland boulder shoveling white steam over her shoulder starting noisily and she passes silent miles of wind bed grasses burst and the head of she approaches there from the bushes at a black place coach his sheep dogs cannot turn their course they sign but on with paws across the fancy passes no one wakes but a jug in the bedroom gently shakes i'm not going to rest that poem but and yeah there's a little electric there which is something a bit different now this this packet is called fondman now i've had this local for haulage at the spar valley railway a few years ago i did visit the spar valley railway last year where we had a bullet pacific for haulage want to have a look at that video i've looked at link on screen now but this was the local i had last time i hadn't realized she'd come up here so she's a packet built in bristol 1924 there's the other side of the mail carriage we were in a moment ago now let's have a look at some of these diesel locos i don't know too much about um industrial goods like it's good or steam pack matter because so many of them this one's called mighty atom built in leeds built in 1943 that's not the train coming but there's a whistle in here that goes every now and then we have another packet here so all these locos would have worked at various docks factories all sorts of you name it any industry there have been hundreds and hundreds of locos like this shunting around may have something a bit different it's not a diesel local it is actually a steam it's a sentinel steam engine it has if we have a look in the cab here you can see it's got vertical boiler and then what happens is at the front here you've got the cylinders and they're vertical as well so it's a bit more like an internal combustion engine and then the wheels which we can't really see they're driven by change by chains if you do want to see a similar sentinel local in action have a look at this link on screen now that was a couple of weeks ago when i went to some sort of dorset railway where we saw one in that way we had a trip behind one sawing action of diesel here and then this is the other side of that andrew barkley steam worker if i walk back here you get a better view looks for a funny singer andrew barkley steam worker coupled to a mark one roll mail carriage i don't suppose these would have ever worked the roll mail carriages and then here's its workspace so she was built in 1918 so it's quite old and then this diesel this blue one we saw a moment ago called hersil built in 1952 quite a long work somewhere and we have another little english electric locomotive and she's very old built in 1930 that's her workspace and then here we have the guardsman with a model of what looks like a mark forward city carriage and i think we're gonna see more than one of these andrew barkley that goes here's another one so they're all similar but a bit different things like the size of the cinders may vary let's see when this the other one was built in 1918 this one was built in 1929 so it was a very successful design it was built over over many years i'm not sure how many there are today surviving but a lot possibly one of the most numerous definitely one of the most numerous steam workers britain this is something a bit more unusual this is a saddle tank very old um london northwestern railway saddle tank let's have a look at the front there you go and now it's becoming a bit of a common thing we have another andrew barkley saddle tank so um i do like the neck unit of engines this one's called alexander and there's the workspace gone so i can't tell you how old this logo is this is a pattern somewhere there's something else i thought was quite funny um it's not running today but i found a miniature railway so what i might have to do now is come here again when it's running and do an episode of miniature railway britain i hadn't realized this one was here and but you know if i'm here and it was running we'll do we'll do an episode of miniature railway britain so something for the future because i'm intrigued to know what is under those sheets it's also the only indoor miniature railway i've ever seen oh and then here we have a class 47 or rather a cab of a class 47 just a cab not the local come round to you around a few things to see cabinet models a few more murals see a workspace on the cab we were 963 by bus traction and now for something rather different we have a fireless locomotive now these locomotives they don't have a fire hence fire they're charged up with steam so it's not a fire again hence fireless so you charge them up with steam and then it run for about eight hours i've actually seen one of these at work a few years ago i was in i was catching a train from lubeana in capital slovenia to zoe geesec in west hungry and as we departed lubeana power station i was like looking out for it i saw one of these shunting there they still have one at lubeana power station still in use shunting which i think is really cool i'll try and find a picture of that one and insert into the video now so there you go and i believe there's still a few working in germany so um you know there's more steam around than you think but that is a fireless locomotive for you also unusually the cylinders at the back is underneath the cab rather than on here we have another andrew barkley most steam locomotives cylinders at the front so let's have a look so this one's called john howe oldest john howe a bit with 1908 this is the oldest of the three we've seen so far there's a model railway there and here we have something really different well it's actually quite similar to what we saw told you about that that um vertical boilard sentinel locomotive here we have another one it just looks rather different if you have a look but with this one we can actually see a bit more how it works so have a look here this is the workspace you can clearly see the vertical boiler now i'm not entirely sure how this so that's not a boiler i don't think we're possibly unless it's got vertical firebox this is a boiler i'm not entirely sure but in what i do know is in here like we saw on the other one are the cylinders so they drive down as i said on the other one they drive chains we're here look you can clearly see the chains which um drive the loco and as for my video at Somerset and Daughty they do sound rather different it's something a bit different here banana van a few exhibits there's a main plate of the pendolino city of Preston and a model of the pendolino because although we haven't seen any today they do pendolinos pass through daily that's like a live steam modern attraction engineer and now we have an avon sized telephone built in bristol in 1909 and she's called Lucy and there's some narrow gauge wagons one with coal one with gravel one with slates they're three of the most common things carried in narrow gauge wagons industrial model loco's there signal's red but we're going to go past it anyway because i'm not trained here's a nice model of a dot it's even a disused railway on the model it's a typical dock so yeah nice little model there another van and then we come down to this end of the museum we have a Robert Theven and Hall form loco built in Newcastle in 1948 that's one of the youngest team locos we've seen in here today called Hcroft number two funny because we have a trip behind Hcroft number one at National Rail Museum when I did the miniature railway Britain video of the south guard miniature railway if you want to see Hcroft number one in action and that's have a link on screen now there's my old friend Fondman again who I said had the haulage at the Spa Valley Railway and what I'm going to do now we're going to go out into the car park because I think there's a couple of loco's there to see then I'm going to take the train I mean I'm going to walk yeah I'm going to have another ride on the train walk back to Preston Station get the train home on here's the other end of the miniature rail so it's quite a short one not the shortest I've ever seen so yeah maybe one day we'll come to a miniature bridge in episode but now I'm going to leave with this view of these industrial steam loco's along the outside as you can see the train's come back and the loco is just running around her train I just want to show you down this end um I was going to finish the video up here but I'll explain why I'm not going through the moment there's one of the loco's awaiting restoration there's a crane behind it now you may be able to hear a noise there's noise you can hear with some men working on the turn table so they're working on this little turn table to go here so I'm thought to be able to turn these industrial steam loco's and have another one over there and another little diesel and there's also one to spare on the restoration what we're going to do now is we'll go back to the front of the museum because there's a couple of things there's all the coal what it's showing us some rather nice murals there we've got our face to stick basically of stuff around the Preston area now we're starting at the most modern end so we have to get to one of the Pendelina ones and we're going to go older and older because we've got fast 40s, Celtic although to me that's East Coast but anyway Coronation, Patriot, looks like a London and Northwestern railway loco that looks like hardwick which once ran on the main line in fact so did the coal tank which is similar to that and then we have Lyon and Steves the Rocket so I hope you enjoyed this video today from the Preston Railway as I said I'm pretty sure is the only railway in England where trains still regularly run down the street if you can think of another one then you know do tell me and the interest is no so you know if you're out Preston way do come and visit this railway I'd probably recommend getting the bus down here because it is quite a long walk but you know I quite like a long walk so thank you very much for watching thank you to Preston or the Ribble Steam Railway for a great day still time for one more train ride though so I'm actually going to have another ride before I walk back up to Preston to get the train home but thank you very much to River Railway it's been a great day really enjoyed it do come and visit them please do feel free to like subscribe and comment and from outside the museum at the Ribble Steam Railway goodbye