 Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm standing amongst the mining equipment here at the Ape Del Heritage Centre as a diesel locomotive there and this rather unusual looking train here. This is what would occur of miners when they went down into the pit to where they were working. So Ape Del is located near Newcastle Underline, Stoke and Trent area. They've got a very good museum which is just behind me here. There's some all-torts about the area. Bricks, locomotives, just about everything. They do do tours down the mine, as you can see the drift mine down there. They're not doing that today. It's also home to the Moseley Rail Trust who run the Ape Del Valley narrow gauge railway, which is just here. Here's the railway station. More collier equipment and there was an ironworks here. The actual Ape Del colliery was further up. So where we are now, this is the site of the ironworks. There was a standard gauge north of Staffordshire Railway that came up here. It was a branch from the Stoke and Trent to Market Drayton line. Now here is the railway station. As you can see, there's a train waiting for us at the diesel locomotive and some carriages. So once they start running, we'll certainly have a ride on that. You can see a War Department train. They sometimes have World War II events where they recreate some of the trains you've seen down on the trenches in France. They have also got trenches here. They're not open today, so we won't be able to go down there today. But anyway, here's our diesel locomotive. So we're really looking forward to a trip behind this locomotive, which will take us further off down the track down there. What I'm going to do, as soon as we've got a bit of time to wait until the train comes, I'm going to follow the footpath, which follows the railway line down. And from there, we should be able to see the engine sheds and be able to see some of the locoes, hopefully the ones that were outside the sheds. I came here last year when they had their 40th anniversary gala, and that was a really good day. I think I had about 10 locoes for haulage. It was pretty impressive for quite a short railway. It's not the longest of heritage lines, but it's got a huge, huge collection, which is really nice. The area around here though is now all a country park. So what was once a very industrial area has kind of mostly gone back to nature. I'm going to go along the path up here to take the path that goes off, because that runs parallel to the railway. And so I'm hoping we're going to be able to see some of the locoes, some of the trains. So here, there really is so much history with all the railways that came up here and the ironworks, the colliers. I couldn't possibly go into it. It's just so much. I'm more of an explorer rather than a historian, but I'm just going to show you really what there is here today. So the main path goes up there. I'm going to go down here. Here we will run parallel to the railway. The trenches they've got are just over there in the field. It's also the other thing that's quite fun is going off down there, there's another railway, which they very, very rarely run pass into trains on. I had a ride last year at their 45th anniversary garter. So there's the station where we were a moment ago. Here's the railway line. So I'm just going to follow the track down. I can already see up ahead of us. There's loads of locoes outside the shed, which is great. In fact it looks like most of the locoes are outside the shed, which is obviously even better. So I'm going to be able to show you quite a few locoes. Interesting. That looks like the frames and a cab of a diesel loco. I can see steam and diesel. Look at this ahead of us here. This is really quite exciting. So what have we got? We've got a simplex diesel loco. Admittedly my knowledge of industrial locoes isn't quite the same as mainline loco. So I'm not sure of every type, but that's definitely a simplex. There's a steam loco called Tattoo. There's her saddle tank there on a wagon. We've got a motor rail diesel loco. Not sure about that one. A Ruston diesel loco. Interesting diesel loco there. LR2573. Another one that's called number five. That one's the simplex number 13. I think it says Alan Keith on it. That's probably a later loco, probably built for working in collars. Maybe it was just overhauled by Alan Keith. I'm not sure if you know. Comment and tell me. And then we move on to our steam locoes. Here we have Joffy, quite a famous loco for the area. Big steam loco for narrow gauge where it looks big compared to some of the diesel locoes in this one. This egg girl. I believe that was built in France. And then what have we got here? That was built in Leeds. That one. Admittedly I just read that off there. A few more diesels. There's a sham steam loco over there. That must have been built maybe for... I don't think it's one of the Alton Towers one, but one for a theme park. And then my favourite loco they have here. This one here. This Huntsley number 303. It's probably one of the biggest two foot gauge locos I've ever been on. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to walk back to the station and have a ride up and down the railway. And then when I've had a ride on the railway, I'm going to go for a walk. And my plan is to show you... I'll show you the station at the other end, show you where they intend to extend the railway. So let's go back to the railway station. This is Ape Del Road station. This is the current end of the Ape Del Valley railway. You can just see the buffers up there, but there are plans to extend the line further across the road up here and on through the country park. There's a couple of things I want to show you while I'm here. I'm just writing the rabbit. So current end of the line as we saw on the journey. I filmed the whole journey going back from Ape Del Road back to the other end. The track currently ends here. You can see the buffer stops. Now, I did mention earlier about there being a North Staffordshire railway line that came up here from the Stoke-on-Trent to Market Drayton line, Standard Gage line. Well, have a look here. Here we have a section of surviving track of the old North Staffordshire line. So eventually, the narrow gauge line will continue across this road and continue on up this path. Well, I'm going to go for a walk now. I'm just going to, now I've had a ride on the trains. I'm going to go for a big long walk all around the country park for about four or five miles and see what else. But I'm going to leave the video here. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you very much for watching. I had a great time here. The volunteers were all very friendly. So, you know, do come and visit the Ape Del Valley Railway. It's a lovely railway. The Heritage Centre next door is also worth a visit. It's got some very interesting exhibits. A few more diesel locos. To be honest, I've never ever seen anywhere. There's so many locos. I think here, there must be more than 50 locos. I've seen so many diesel locos today. It really is a great place if you like local locos. And if you're not so interested in railways, but you just like to have a ride on the train, come here, have a ride on the train. And then when you finish, you can go for a walk like I'm going to in the Ape Del Country Park. So from the Ape Del Country Park, thank you very much for watching. Please do feel free to like, subscribe, comment. Thank you very much. Goodbye.