 Hello thank you for joining me I'm in the Rose Gardens today in the beautiful Thompson Park in Burnley. We've come here today to ride on the Thompson Park miniature railway. You can also have a boat ride here you can hire a boat as some people just up there are doing and row around the lake here and then go and have a train ride. I'm not going to worry about having a boat ride because I'm more interested in trains but you know it'd be quite fun to do. I'm going to leave the Rose Gardens behind there's the pavilion just going behind behind that tree. What do I do? I'm going to take you over this bridge here and we're going to go down we're going to walk through the gardens and soon we shall come to the Thompson Park miniature railway so this is quite an extensive miniature railway it's one I've never been to before so I'm really excited about this one. There's the pavilion you can see the signs it says Italian garden miniature railway and rose garden where we've just come from. So to take you over the bridge here and there you have a look at the views over the lake so a really nice view it's a really really lovely park here enjoying a row rowing their boats we're going to go down here now we've got across the river Brun I think that's how it's pronounced which is the river flowing right in front of us and on the other side of the river is the railway we're looking for which goes all around Italian gardens so we'll see the railway whether we'll see a train or not then we'll walk through Italian gardens and on the other side of Italian gardens is the railway station so we might see a train it does such an interesting circuit that you know you sort of see one bit track then you walk on there's another bit track and as you'll see when we go on it effectively does a figure of eight and then a big loop around the outside so you can sort of look in one direction you'll see two trains moving in different directions so it's a really pretty exciting miniature railway and I've got to say it looks like it's going to take us through some really attractive scenery so just coming here this is the river here even says now as we approach as we go on to the bridge it says beware of trains which we will find very soon after crossing the river Brun so as we come off the bridge you can see we have a railway line we have a railway line here and we have a railway line there and so this is what I said you could sort of walk along and train could be running one way on one the other way on the other so we're going to ride around all of this so I've been told the railway is a kilometer and nine meters so you know it's more than half a mile's worth of ride so we're going to have you know a really good long ride which we're going to really enjoy now this here this is the italian gardens so that's where I'm going to take you through so this is the outer circuit of the railway in circling the italian gardens let you have another look at the river and then once we've been through the italian gardens which are just as beautiful as the rose gardens will come to the railway station where and that is where I said I'm really looking forward to our trip on the Thompson Park miniature railway so I'm going to take you over a little level crossing here we're going to the italian gardens and there we have the italian gardens in front of us I believe this was all laid out in the 1930s as a town park so it's a bit like walking around a stately home although as far as I'm aware this never was a stately home it it always has been you know a public park and but it's inspired by you know some of the stately homes the gardens they would have had but this one has always been for the public to enjoy and then it's when we come out of here we come to the railway station and we have a sign it does say trains are running today which is a very welcome sign and there we have the station and there's a few trains waiting for us so it says Thompson Park miniature railway trains are operating what I'm going to do and the public will join this queue here I've already spoken to them they've said this is all right I'm just going to come up to the station this way so while they're quiet I can just show you some of the loco's they've got now this I really like you can see we have a tram and it says Burnley Cooperation Tramways now if you look at the number of it it's number 74 now the reason it's number 74 is because when Burnley did have a tram network the tram numbers went up to number 73 so had there then been any more trams the next one would have been number 74 so seeing as this the first tram since the tram network to be built to run in Burnley albeit apart rather than the actual tram network they've given it number 74 waiting down there we have a Union Pacific loco and we go across here and this I really like got class 91 901 and its um its name is Swallow because it's got the intercity Swallow livery which I really like see because as a child I remember seeing the class 91s I remember going up to York on a class 91 in this livery and so yeah that's really nice to see I think now now it's time for us to go and have a ride I've had a few rides here today and it's the first time I've been on a class 91 in city livery for quite a long time there is one of these coast ones is currently going around in city livery which I think is really nice um but you know if you want to not travel quite so far on a class 91 you can always come here to Thompson Park so what I'm going to do now I'm going to walk up here um I'm going to show you something over here first um I've been given permission by the railway to show you a little few other things when the railway first started it was just this simple circuit here so can you see this bit of track here we didn't travel on this bit of track it now really provides a quick route from the station back to the shed so that is the original line then I believe the figure of eight was built and then the wider loop was built um so we come up here we have a Union Pacific locomotive another Union Pacific we've got two Union Pacific loco's here this one actually came from the Brook size miniature railway so we've got one there got another loco there we've got this little loco here there's the fullest loco seems to have the biggest carriages which I think is quite nice so we've got it closely while there's no trains coming and uh take a look and if you have a look I don't know if you can see it there but you might be able to see the action man is driving that one is there a train coming no there's not a train coming but there's a tram coming so we watched the the tram go past us on the main line which um I really enjoyed having a trip behind I mean where else would you get a class 91 a tram and Union Pacific loco in one day um I think that's quite an exciting um you know variety of different rolling stock we've had so a while and we're here I'm just going to show you yeah a quick look at the engine sheds so out to the variety this is cool look we have a class 150 DMU so class 150's you know they're fairly common around the north of England and in Wales and you do also find them in the southwest so I like 150's um you know I just think they're nice DMU so I always enjoy a trip on a full-size one and here we have a miniature one it's a three car one there's only two three car ones in real life all the others are two car 150's and then if we have a look here another diesel locomotive and um here we have steam locomotive Sarah and then another old favorite of mine a good old HST there's a scamp locomotive and there's another diesel locomotive behind the scamp so I'm going to take you back out the shed as we come out the engine shed there's one more thing to show you a carriage shed now this is really quite cool as carriages can go in here and you lift it up so you can see that carriage in mid-air so lift them up and down they can set um push in another set of carriages on the track below that one there's that locomotive from Brookside so um what I'm going to do now I'm going to head off I've had a great afternoon here at the Thompson Park Miniature Railway it really is a lovely railway um volunteers here really friendly so you know if you're in Burnley why not come and visit this railway and have a walk around the park enjoy the gardens maybe row a boat around the lake it's um a really lovely park this is so I hope you enjoyed it please do feel free to like subscribe comment um from Burnley Park and Burnley Cooperation to Tramway number 74, goodbye