 Here is the disused Noel Hill Narrowgate Railway. Hello, thank you for joining me. Today I'm out for a walk in Maidenhead Ficket, just west of the Buccher town of Maidenhead. Not far that way. It's the A4 as in the London to Bath Road, not the A4 as in a steam locomotive. I'm just going for a walk through these woodlands. It's a very peaceful place, but this would have been in the late 16th century, early 17th century, the haunts of the highwaymen, such as Claude de Vil and Dick Turpin. They'd hide in these woods. They'd go out there to the road when they'd hear the clip-clop of a carriage and they'd rob them. And Dick Turpin would run off to his cottage over near Sonning, and that's where he kept his horse Blackbess. He could also hide in the woodlands all around here until the dust had settled. So we're just going to walk up here. Just going, it's a really pleasant woodland. And the place I'm going to is a couple of miles on from here. We're going to find a railway line. Of course, the Great Western Main Line is also not too far, probably about a mile south of me in that direction. We're not going to go and see that today, but we are looking for a railway line. And it's a railway line that has never, as far as I'm aware, carried a passenger train and it was purely built for demonstrations. So we're going to keep walking till we get there. We're just sort of coming to a path's crossing in the woods. There's a little clearing up here. I thought we'll just walk up to that. I'll show you that. And then I'm going to carry on walking, as I said, a couple of miles down the road towards Bath. So yeah, it's really opening out now. I've always liked these woodlands here. Made in Hedvick. I just found them such a nice, peaceful place. Such a variety with different types of trees, et cetera. And here we come to a little opening. You may be able to hear an aeroplane. That's also because I've mentioned there's railways near here and of course there's roads near here. There's also a white wall from airfield. I did a video on that one once. There's a link on the screen now. So do have a look at that video. That's another place which I've always enjoyed going to. So now we come to this clearing in the woodland of Made in Hedvick. So I'll just let you see that. And then I'm gonna carry on with my walk and towards this railway that we're going to find. So on I go. Well, I'm now about halfway between Made in Hedvick and Noel Hill where we're heading to. Just crossing the fields over there. You can't see it, but behind there somewhere is the Stubbings Estate, which is heading up towards Stubbings Farm. And the big lime trees you can see over there on the distance. That is the driveway to Hall Place, which is now Berkshire College of Agriculture. So just giving you an idea, that's where we always are effectively between two former country states. And the A4 is over there somewhere. I'm gonna carry on until we get to Noel Hill. So here we are. We have made it to Noel Hill in this field. I'll tell you about the field in a moment. Just pointing out a couple of things. Over there is Noel Hill Church. The A4 runs just along there. Now this field, they used to have a big steam rally in this field with lots of traction engines and everything you'd expect at a steam rally. And it was, I've heard it spoken of very highly. But unfortunately I never had the chance to attend the Noel Hill steam rally. It finished in 2004. I'm not exactly sure the reasons why, but they don't have it anymore. So now you can still walk through this field as a public footpath. There's also another public footpath over there. You can see there's a few walkers in the field. But there's one thing remaining from that steam rally. One thing that was quite unusual for steam rallies because on the whole steam rallies have most steam, except railways, steam trains, steam locomotives. Sometimes they might have a miniature railway, sometimes a standard gauge or narrow gauge steam engine attends on a lorry and is displayed. But very rarely is there any real sort of working steam. And in a way we've got so many narrow gauge railways over the country and standard gauge houses railways where you can see that. But here they did have a railway and they still have it. Here is the disused Noel Hill narrow gauge railway. So this railway wasn't built for giving visitors rides. It was built for demonstrations. So what they would have done is there'd have been demonstrations of steam narrow gauge. If you look at the track, it's not very long. It runs just up there and there's another line coming here and ends on that embankment. They'd had a big steam excavator working down there. It had been digging away. It had been putting the gravel dug into wagons. They'd have gone off down there, come back down here. They'd have had a couple of steam locomotives, maybe diesel as well. They had the quite famous Kerr Stuart Loco Peter Pan, definitely attended here from pictures and videos I've seen. So after the steam rally, everything else disappeared. But as this is a fairly permanent thing, it's still here. So you can see this is where the big steam excavator would have sat here, digging away, putting its aggregate, its dug into wagons and they'd have gone up and down. So you'd have also had the chance to see a steam loco working with perhaps four tipping wagons, giving the feel of what industrial railways, perhaps in quarries, would have looked like. So it really would have been quite, it's quite something to have seen. And now all we have is the track. I think looking at the track, it probably now wouldn't be safe to run a locomotive on it. It's especially up there. We'll go and have a look at that in a moment. Probably wouldn't be safe. Also, you can't get now from, we've got the two tracks, you can't get from one to the other because here we have the one set of points on the line. The track panel is missing. So there would have been a lever here to have changed the points. I don't think it seized, the rails aren't gonna move. So this would have been the head shunt. So the steam loco would have pulled into here. I don't know why this bit of track is missing, pulled into here and then reversed out. As you can see, it's a bit of a cutting now all around me. I just want to walk up to where the buffer stops would have been. And now we look that way. We can see where the whole of the system. It's that kind of track that is so light that they'd have used in the world wars and the trenches in France. You'd be able to take it up very easily and move it and lay it down somewhere else. It's just sections of track panels. Here we have the fish plates joining the panels together. So you'd be able to take it up, move it somewhere else. But I think it's quite nice how this remains. And you never know, I think it's unlikely. But I'd never say never that a train will use this track again. So we're coming up here to now where the excavator would have dropped its aggregate into the wagons. And the track ends up here on this embankment. Now you can see what's happened. The tracks moved over and it's no longer lined up with the buffers. So yeah, really, this is all there is of the Noel Hill narrow gauge rail. We can see the other line running along there. So that was today's walk. Started off with Highwayman and we finished in this field of sheep with a narrow gauge rail. I don't suppose the sheep realized that their field's that bit more exciting because they've got an narrow gauge railway in it. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little video from a bit of a different railway. 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