 Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm just sat in the vegetable garden. Today's another episode of Miniature Railway Britain, and the Miniature Railway we're going to is in the village Which never had a standard gauge railway, had a former railway, we'll get onto that in a minute. It's possibly best known for its rather unusual houses in the rocks. The village I'm talking about is Kinver in the West Midlands or in Staffordshire. And what we're going to do, we're going to have a quick look at the houses in the rocks And then we're going to make our way down to the village to have a look at the Miniature Railway So we come to here, and there's a rather extraordinary view of these houses here, just in the rocks. You can see that's a rock. There's various levels. There's some more up there. It's very busy up the top. So I'm not going to go up there. But I thought we'll do, we'll just walk through one of them Just so we can say we've seen the rock houses. See that there? Just looks like normal front of the house Except it's not a building. Wait, it's a building. It's a rock. And so basically people lived inside here just in the rocks. It's quite, really quite fascinating. As you can see there's no sort of level feelings or anything. It's all here in the rocks. There's a corridor going down here. And here we are. This is where it lives, you can see. There's a bedroom there. There's the laundry hanging up over there. So this is one of the rock houses at Kinver, I'd say. There's these rather interesting corridors. Look how thick these walls are. I think they're eventually condemned in the 1950s for effectively being slums. But they really are quite fascinating which you can now come up here today and visit them. So we're going to leave this one behind. We'll come out the back of the rock. We're outside again. There's another rock house just up here. So it's almost like a cluster of various different rock houses. And there have been some more of the top ones at the top haven't been restored. So there you are. That's another rock house. But as I said, the purpose of coming here today is for a miniature railway Britain video. I just thought we couldn't come to Kinver and not show you a bit of the rock houses. It's a really fascinating, unique site. I'm going to go into this. So look at that. It's just funny. There's not a window in the sides of the rocks. We're just going to go to this corner here and I'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about. That's right. So down there is the village of Kinver. Yeah, the camera is doing that annoying thing when it's really sunny. It basically disappears. Anyway, out that way is the village of Kinver. There never was a standard gauge railway to Kinver. The only railway that ever went to Kinver was a tramway. It ran from Starbridge. It was three foot six inches. So that's what's effectively known as the Cape Gauge. Which they used in South Africa, but they had quite a few tramways in Britain were of that gauge. There's another little hole here in the rocks. So Kinver never had a railway. It had a tramway. I think it opened in 1901, closed in 1930, about four miles long. Ran from Kinver to Starbridge. It'd be great now if the West Midlands metro slowly expanding. They've just got to Wolverhampton now. Not done that yet. Maybe one day they'll be a West Midlands metro line to Kinver. I shouldn't get too excited. So there's never been a railway in Kinver. Can't blame beaching for Kinver not having a railway. But as I said, there is a railway. There's a toilet in a bucket in a rock. Yeah, so there is a railway and it's the Kinver miniature railway run by the Kinver and West Midlands District Model Engineering Society. So I've got to find my way down, walk through the village. Let's go and find this miniature railway down there somewhere. We've now come down the hill. I've just walked through the village centre and we're just heading up towards this miniature railway. I think it's that like a leisure centre and recreation ground. All those kind of, yeah, leisure activities. Of course, miniature rail is our form of leisure activity. I have been to this railway before. I last visited about 10 years ago. So I wonder if you'll be as I remember it. I mentioned how there used to be a tramway which ran from here to Starbridge. That's long gone. But what does still run between here and Starbridge is the River Stour. That's River Stour down there, which the railway is situated on the bank. So we're walking into here now. I'm just coming into the railway's car park. And if you look across the cars over there, over there is the station footbridge, which we should see in a moment. We're going to go over the footbridge and then we'll go and have our ride on the train. It's always exciting when you come to a miniature railway, especially one that's run by model engineers, because you never quite know what's going to be running. It's going to get interesting cars in the car park, like that cater room there. So let's have a look. Let's go this way where we can see the railway. Get our first few off the railway. So there we are. There's the railway station, see the footbridge, everything. So it says Kinver and West Midland Society of Model Engineers. Railway runs every Sunday, I believe, from Easter to the end of October. So if you want to come along, come along on Sunday and we get to here. So that must be, that's the engine shed down there. As I said, there's this footbridge here. It looks like what happens is you go over the footbridge, get to come back down and then you get on the train just down there. So let's go over the footbridge. We'll have a look. There's also, here's to be, I don't know if it's running today, but a ground level track. So we've got a race track, I think three and a half inch and five inch gauge railway. Thank you. Make our way up here. We go up here and just see the train going out underneath us. Oh, I see. Look at that. That train there is going on shed by the end of it. So they're going to have to move the track, being a race track. Then we go up the ramp, up there to the shed. What I'm going to do is find my way round here. We're going to go down into the middle. We can have a look at the ground level seven and a quarter inch track. See the site from here quite well from up on the bridge. And we're going to make our way down. You can see it's quite busy. There's a lot of people queuing up to get on the train. So that's what I've got to do next. I've got to buy my ticket and then I'll queue up. You can see me better now. The sun is very bright. It's that typical fall-fall sun. Make our way down here. That's where I'm going to buy my ticket. Looks like they also do teas. It's quite nice. Look at this. There's a steam locomotive. Looks like a big Indian narrow gauge steam locomotive. So hopefully get a ride behind that. So what I wanted to show you before we had a ride on the train, you can see there's a race track and the race track seems wherever you look, there's a bit of a race track. I think it goes off over there, disappears off around there from what I remember. And then it goes, that's it goes right around us, around here. Then this is like the final loop around there to the station, I know, but hopefully when we have the ride, you'll understand a bit more what I'm talking about. And then out of the ground level track, it's quite a lot shorter, but it's seven and a quarter inch. It doesn't appear to be run, so quite a lot shorter than the race track. And it seems to start over there. It runs to just here, goes in a loop around there and it could do a continuous circle and then back to the station. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to go and buy my ticket and we're going to go for a ride on the high level track. After doing a bit of line siding, I've got myself another ticket. I'm going to go and have a ride, hopefully on the steam train this time. Class 22 down there, which is just about to depart and the Indian steam locomotive, that really was something different. That's what I like, especially about these model engineering societies, military railways, you just don't know what you're going to get usually until you get there. You know, it can be literally anything. The class 22 is just departing. There it goes over there. We'll go down and we'll have a look, see what else we can see. I've done a fair bit of line siding, so I'm quite happy with what I've seen this afternoon. Now it's towards the end of the day. There's not many people in this particular area. When I arrived, it was pretty busy. So what we'll do, I didn't want to see that Indian steam locomotive go past one more time and then I think that'll be it for today's video. So if you're ever out this way, they run, I think it's a Sunday afternoon between Easter and the end of October, do come and visit them. And as I did, you could also go up to the Kinver Edge rock houses. There's a lot of nice walks you can do. If you go right up on, I didn't have time to say, but if you go right up to the top of Kinver Edge, you get fantastic views for miles and miles around. So do, you know, if you're coming here, do consider doing that. I can just hear that steam locomotive. We're going to finish by seeing it go right round here. Almost a bit like being in India, because in India, you know, you get railways like Darjeeling. I know this isn't from Darjeeling, but they have lots of curves. And that's exactly what we're going to get now. She's just coming. I'm going to see her go right away around. I think that's a brilliant logo. The real one must be massive because she'd be, you know, she'd be bigger probably than most of our Pacifics because she's got outside frames. And I think she was a two, or she had two, eight, four, I think she's a big loco. And this is just in five inch and she's pretty big. So we're going to see her go past one more time. And then that'll be in today's video. And I think also that class 22 is going to come past. It's what I like about the race track. You've got so many tracks everywhere you look. Just tracks, you know, see her go past again. And as the class 22 disappears off, I hope you've enjoyed this video. Thank you very much for watching. Thank you to the Kinver and West Midlands Model Engineering Society for a great afternoon. Please do feel free to like, subscribe and comment. Goodbye.