 So thank you for joining me, I'm currently on a train, as you can see I'm on a miniature Pullman train, oh and there's another train going fast to Hymen. We're at the Barnard miniature railway in Essex, it's a very very extensive miniature railway. I was just going for a walk around the grounds when I saw this little Pullman unit was about to head back to the main station so I thought what I'd do is I'll start the video here for a change. What we're going to do, we're going to have a ride around most of this extensive railway. We're not going to quite do all of it for reasons I'll explain. And then we're going to explore the gardens because there's some rather unusual sculptures. As you may have seen we just went past some culled cows and there is a giant pencil. So we're going to head to the main station now and we're going to go for a very very exciting ride. So we're at the other end of the line, we've just seen a train pass on the London Tilbury and South End line so that way it's looking towards London Fenture Street and of course that way it goes towards. South End. Now from this station I thought we'd leave the train here and we'd go for a walk. So the train went off back to where we started. We're going to have a little look around. I'm just going to show you the station now it's nice and quiet and then we'll walk through the gardens. There's some very interesting sculptures to see and we'll see some lion-side shots of the trains going by and I can talk a bit about the railway because we've had the ride but I haven't really said much other than where we are. So let's just have a look at this station. It's very unusual it has the appearance of like a ruined Greek temple with all these columns everywhere. Apparently what it was was they had it as a station with an overall roof and the wind damaged it which is a bit of a shame in some ways but then in other ways it makes it, well I've never been to a railway station that's like a Greek temple before. Now the line continues through a tunnel and runs parallel to the main line but the recent heatwave has damaged some of the tracks so unfortunately trains are only going this far. But then it's a very very extensive railway so you know we've had a long ride as it is. So it's not the underworld and as I've always said with Miniature Railway Britain if we somewhere changes or we don't do all of the Miniature Railway we'll simply come back again. No steam running today either that's due to potential fire risk because of you know the heatwave and most railways haven't been running steam lately. I was in Hungary the other day and they were running a steam train on the main line and I thought how are they getting away with that? Well it then dawned on me it was oil fired if you want to see that have a look at the screen now. So there's not been a lot of steam over the last month or so and if you wonder why if you're watching this video in a few years time look at this the river is dried up so there's a miniature railway bridge here you can just see down there fixed distance signal for the station and then the London Tilbury and South End line is a little level crossing here so we can cross the track. So the track does continue I think then there's a culvert there under the main line and there's the other end of the tunnel we're going to go through so another time will come here and do that. So what I'm going to do now is we're going to explore the rest of the site and look at the sculptures. The railway continues down there I do want to go to that end and find that station but now I'm going to head into the gardens and see what we can find. I'm in a wigwam of all places I've never been to a wigwam and a miniature railway at the same place before. I'm going to show you where we are. It's like we've kind of come somewhere to another country where they have wigwams. It's the sort of randomness of this place. There's all sorts of different sculptures and themes and everything which makes it really quite exciting. So we're going to continue along here. These are some cacti. Is that a train? No, they've not. Because the London Tilbury and South End line is just there. Look at these cacti. These are pretty cool. There's all sorts of sculptures like this around the site there's just so many I can't possibly feature them all but I'm going to try and show you some of this. Look at that metal-walled cacti. Is that a bin out in the desert? Especially with the wigwams. And then we walk over here. So if you'd like to come to this Barnards miniature railway and indeed the gardens, be careful which days you choose. On a Thursday, like it is today, the gardens are open and the railway is open. They have some days which are possibly more aimed towards railway enthusiasts but those days are just for doing the railway and you wouldn't be able to come around these gardens. They have various other open days and garlands throughout the year so it really is worth coming to. And I'm here on a Thursday afternoon in the summer as you've gathered it's the summer and there's not too many more people here now but it's just really exciting and you know even there's quite a lot of cars here and I thought it's really busy but everyone's just dispersed into the site. The other thing they do to sort of make sure you see the maximum amount of sculptures you can is you follow these. So see this B and the blue arrow, that's one trail you can do. I think there's a red trail as well so that's one way of being, you can follow those trails and see as many sculptures as you can. Regarding getting here, you've pretty much got to come by car although the railway is close and so is West Horne Station unfortunately there's no real public footpath to get you there and the walk along the road there's no pavement so that would be a bit dangerous so I don't suggest coming here by train. If you're wondering what you can hear behind me it's not a train but if you don't want to walk around the gardens they do these buggy tours around the garden so that's one way of getting to explore the gardens so there's not just trains here so let's go now and have a look around the rest of the gardens let's leave the TPs behind the heat don't just feel like I'm in desert I'm going to leave that old couple to continue with their walk and looking into the ponds and I think we might be near the other end of the railway line it's just over here where that sculpture there it's a little station here so if we'd come on the train all the way we would have arrived at this station here it would have come from just along there so although it's not so obvious there is the two railways are running parallel to each other so what's it called this station? it's called Angel Green so here we are, we've arrived at Angel Green Station on foot not by train and there's a turntable there for the locomotive to turn around before heading back the loco's they've got, they've got a lot of loco's that are mardikes now we will, well we did, didn't we? on the first train we saw that high mech go in the other way that's built by mardike the loco we went on was quite a rare loco to get for which because that's normally their permanent way loco but because they're not running steam at the moment that's why we travel behind that loco they've got various X-morph steam loco's and they've got a couple of what are the Thomas loco's it's not Thomas the Tank Engine, Thomas is a make of steam loco I'm going over this bridge now going on to an island so they've got various different loco's you can see so if you were to come for a steam go which I think will have to be my next visit then you see all kinds of things that jetty, there's the buggy tour even somehow having these pylons running over the site they just somehow fit in it's all very nice here now I'm going to go back over the bridge and explore more of the gardens it's an interesting garden electrical insulators mixed with roses now this garden we have to walk across on the stepping stones the way it's plowed with the stones we can't actually walk on the stones so what we're going to do is start to cross the stepping stones it's quite fun so if you look carefully you may be able to see how someone's raked all the stones in a certain way so we'll follow it this way it makes it quite exciting there's a junction here that's the main road which I mentioned has no pavement I'm going to go this way because someone has already gone down that one so now in the shade you might be able to see better what I mean about the raked stones so that's quite cool I like gardens, I do like traditional gardens in stately homes but I also like gardens like this that are just a bit different okay this is although this is actually a bit more traditional like a vegetable garden so I like gardens of any type really everywhere you look there's like and you can't possibly do it all in a day but everywhere I look there's like another path going off somewhere we were sort of in the more open vastness of the gardens now we're kind of in the more compartmentalised gardens and you're never quite sure what you're going to find that's the house here so it was originally Barnard's farm and it was all farmland the owners have simply converted it well it's their house I'm not going to go over there because it's kind of don't want to invade on their privacy but they do at the same time open the gardens for people to visit so that is the house there look at that that's cool it's like a sea of blue so we're now, well I'll show you where we are we're almost back to where we started back to the main railway station one with the overall roof so what we'll do, we'll walk down here because there's quite a nice lake down here as it's getting slightly later in the day see all these cars they're people who have been here for the last few hours and they're on their way home so we're just going to go across here and look at this it's cool there's a man on a thing and there's a jetty crossing the lake and we'll do that they do also, I think it's open today have a collection of interesting cars so if you come on another day you can see it's like an old petrol station you'd get to see that but again, perhaps we'll come another day but look at this things like this, this is exciting and then we'll be back at the station I do want to go into the middle of the site and I want to show you the other station which we passed through Belvedere station there's some interesting stuff to see and talk about there so let's go down that way into the gardens we've now come down the main hedge and in each of the little kind of arcoves there's various different sculptures there's also this bloke here who's a sculptor it's funny, my head looks bigger than his but if we go like this you can see, not saying he's big headed but his head's bigger than mine I can hear the trains again now there's some, I don't know if you can pick it out I can just see the train just there there's some railways here quite complex, so there's the line we came on the main line as we saw when we were on the train it was double track to start with and then after Belvedere it became single track and then at the station we got off at you could have passed another train but it continued to be single track and here's another lake with low water and this lake here has got a lot more water so going back to the railways now the railway line runs along there they're working on building a branch line called the lakeside branch you'll be able to change trains at Belvedere to catch a train on that branch so that'll be quite exciting we're going to go over to Belvedere station soon and have a look so here's the lake and if you look as if sort of out of nowhere a minute to railway just starts or ends here and it weaves its way off round there so that's the end of the lakeside branch which you'll get from Belvedere we'll have a look at that when we get there now there's a very unusual stop here where we went to the gardens what's this? this looks exciting yes they do but we're going off on a slight tangent look at this this is exciting so sort of every now and then you'll come to these strange little sculpturey and things line up I know on a lot of traditional country gardens things do line up but here they do this is comfortable so yes there's lots of things here designed so your eye leads you from one thing to another which I'll show you when we get to here so you can see this rather unusual looking sculpture here or more like a piece of modern art and you look straight down see there's that man over there look straight down to the main house let's go have a look at this look at that it's just I quite like it somewhere where there was lots of modern art was Houghton Hall in Norfolk have a look at that video, link on screen now let's go in here when we come into this building yes with these old windows and you look straight down there and you can see straight to the house, it's a dead straight line and then out here the line continues a bit crossbar railway line I don't think it's supposed to be a halt but it's a bit like a halt here you can sit here and watch trains if you want to so we'll get to down here no train coming more in today's use of sculptures so I could just sit here and watch trains because you'd also see trains on the main line as well, that'd make a picture if a charter train like a steam train run along there so I'm going to head that way now and head over to have a look at Belvedere Station so I've seen a few line slide shots this is known as Pruder Lane which we've just been walking down the Pruder is felt like that, it doesn't look like it it's one of those phonetic traps the actual Pruder itself is a railway station on the Newcastle to Carlisle Line so as we come down here, that's the double track section we're going to walk over this really rather interesting bridge here and the railway runs over another bridge we're going to have a look at Belvedere Station and there's one more part of the garden I really want to show you before we go Belvedere, you could say, is the crew of the Barnard's Minuterao it's the junction station where you can change trains and go to different places or parts of the railway we saw the Lakeside branch a moment ago, or before we saw the line slide shots we saw the end of it so this is where it starts so eventually you'll be able to travel by train in whichever direction and catch a train to the Lakeside we're going to go up there in a minute because that looks exciting, but now let's go to Belvedere Station of course there is a Belvedere Station in Kent which is not far that way 10 miles that way, but on the other side it's in so that's why they've given this station name Belvedere, I understand so here we are, we've arrived at the station we sit here, wait for train I don't know, waiting rooms there are also waiting rooms I think where you can sit and wait if it was not such a warm day anyway, I'm going to explain the track layout here so it's got a bay platform here now when I started the video on that Pullman Union I caught it here, I've been walking around the gardens and I caught the train there now down this end of the platform there's another bay platform that is the Lakeside bay so if you look you've got three tracks so a down train would be coming from where we started it would pass through here and it has to wait there for a train to come off the single line this track here the middle track is also a down line and it forms a loop which comes back onto here so when a train comes back from the single track section it will be on the far track over there it will come across this diamond crossing and onto here and when this train arrives so earlier on when we were waiting there we had to wait for a train to come off here but in theory a train could also come through here around the loop and back to here then the line there, that one is the Lakeside branch where we had to climb the hill and that's where I think we'll conclude our visit I have really enjoyed it here I definitely will come back definitely to see the steam running there's a bit of a shame with the heat but I understand no railway wants to start a fire that's why they weren't running steam today look at these roses one thing I'd say about this place is it's not a flower garden apart from here there are gardens where you see lots of different flowers it's more of a sculpture garden and it's kind of more about walking through the trees it's a very relaxing calming place I find it's just very relaxed and just such a nice atmosphere to be here so it really is it's a nice place but it's not the sort of gardens where you're going to see loads and loads of flowers like you might at some other gardens if you even walk up here you see different vistas going off in different directions and I'll stand about earlier helping line up and then look again the rhinoceros there so we've got the lakeside branch here and the return loop the return loop runs along there and round back and then that's the single track section the main line service over there so trains on so there's the loop and the lakeside branch do also use that bit of track the trains coming back around there on the loop and that's also the trains on the lakeside branch go that way quite complex track layout finished walking along up here oh and by the way that is a runway along there they have got an aeroplane here so you can in theory you could if you had an aeroplane and you spoke to got the right permissions spoke to self-end air traffic control you could come here by plane but yeah I don't have a plane so we're now we've kind of come almost 360 because there is Belvedere station but we've got to keep going to get to the top of this this you know this whatever it is mounds which are following up I've been told that the spoil to create this mounds came from the lake when they dug the lake they then piled it up high so there's some complex track work down there I can see four different tracks and it's like I say it's the loop the main line and the lakeside branch almost at top now so we're going to see what there is to see the views over the site it's really quite exciting we're almost here now to get another view that way of the end of the runway not many miniature railways have an end of the runway just look at that so we are very close to the top now funny enough another sculpture on the top I'm thinking about the last person left here and it feels like it could rain soon so as soon as I've done this I'm going to walk back and I think even the trains stop running so I don't think I can get to the train back but wow look at this, exciting as I said about all the railways and everything the lakeside branch runs along there by the runway and into the trees that way the main line runs off over there and eventually over there there's more of the rhinoceros the upside down man some electric light sculptures down there, there's a giant spider down there's Bill with the station so I hope you enjoyed this video thank you very much for watching and do come and visit the Barnards Minch Railway I said it's best not to try and come by public transport because you can only really walk along a road with no pavement so I wouldn't suggest doing that so I do suggest getting coming by car at the Barnards Minch Railway