 Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm on a train heading through to London Suburban, which just departed London, Victoria. This train goes to Ashford International. We're going to Swansea to visit the Swansea New Barn Railway. It's another episode of Miniature Railway Britain. Never been to this railway before, so I'm really looking forward to visiting. I understand they are running some steam there, so that would be good. I'm on the train. One thing I would say is I do like trains where they have a nice sit-in-the-mail station, but it's good for a tunnel. I do like it when they have a nice four-plus-four seat. It's just so much more civilised than seats that don't line up with windows and all that kind of things. I feel I can sit here. I can really enjoy the journey. I've got my OS map on the table and my little London Rail Atlas, all the way where we're going to, is just outside London. So I can sit down and just enjoy the journey. It helps the fact that I'm right in front of the train and there's not too many people about, so it's just nice and quiet. But this is to me how if all train journeys were like this, it'd be perfect. It'd be awesome. The tunnel in a minute. Somewhere above us, there's the old railway to Crystal Palace, passes over this tunnel. I'll have to go and explore that line one day. So I'm going to be going through this tunnel for a while, so I'm just going to sit back, enjoy the journey, and soon we shall be at Swanley. Here we are. I've arrived at Swanley. I've never been to this railway station before. I've been through it many times. We'll watch our train go out, and then there's a freight due quite soon, so I'm going to hang around to see that pass through, and then we're going to go and find the Swanley New Barmanage Railway. That was good to see a freight train pass through. We're now going to make our way out the station. This is something I wish they wouldn't do, putting frosted glass in, because it just means, you know, people like me like to be able to see the trains, not see them. And it seems pointless. I don't know why they do that. Anyway, come out the station. They don't have ticket barriers here. There is a ticket office, but that's at the other entrance, and that's not the entrance we want. So we come out here, and we appear to be in the housing estate. That's what I'm going to do. We are at Swanley Station. I'm going to make my way through this housing estate, and let's go and find the Swanley New Barmanage Railway. So, here we are. I've arrived at Swanley Park. However, I think it's just starting to improve, and my J is generally improving, because we've gone from less rain and steam. Here we have a steam locomotive. And I've seen that locomotive before. She was at Barnard from Hitcher Railway last year. About a year ago it was, so you'll see that video. I'm fairly sure I'll travel behind that locomotive. There's another one coming this way, and there's this one here. It's what's going across. It's actually stopping for water, I think. There's another one coming up the bank, so we've got quite a lot going on. There's a tinkerbell coming up the bank, so it's like an out-and-back line. They turn off that way, they go around in a loop before we go for a ride, and then they come back this way, like this tinkerbell. This is what's going to go past. So here we have a busy railway station with four locomotives in steam. This is perfect. It's a really nice way to spend an autumn Sunday afternoon. So I'm not sure which one's going to go out next, but we'll ride behind them all. Is that one going? So we'll have a ride, try and ride behind them all, and we'll also do some line driving. Let's watch this one go. Looks great. Let's go and have a ride. So here we are. I've got my ticket. We're about to go for a ride. There's a steam loco here. Let's just have a look and see what we've got. There's about four locomotives out today. Old Rosie, I think, if you're going to take us for a ride. And there's another steam loco here, just reversing onto the other train. So what we'll do, we'll jump on this one and we'll go for a ride. We'll go to the intermediate station and we'll get off there and then we'll come back on another train. That was a really fun trip. I was thinking of getting off at the Parkway station, but I thought we'd do. I was enjoying it so much I just decided I'd stay on. So what we'll do now is we'll go for a walk and we can get some line side shots and then when we get to the Parkway, I'll either get a train back or a walk. I haven't quite decided. So I've just been looking at what happens. When the locos have worked the train, they come up here to the headshunt and then as the thinker bell is now, they will reverse and work the next train. If you have a look here, there's another set of carriages there. It's not particularly busy today because of the weather, but I've been told when the weather is nice, it's very, very busy. Also, the loco there, Kestrel, now that's a nice loco. The real one got exported to Russia and it's always hoped that she'll be found eventually, but it's probably likely that she was scrapped. This is a Mardike loco and I've got a few of these here, but today it seems to be an all steam passenger. So I'm going to walk off down there and we'll see what sort of line side shots we can get. So here we are out in the park. It's been nice watching the trains at the line side. Interestingly, the line, as we've seen from when we rode on it earlier, is a giant balloon loop. It opened in 1986. Now this was the original line. It was a there and back and there would have been a parting loop somewhere along here. What was the first part of our ride? That is actually newer. That was added a year later in 1987. And the idea was that down here is the car park. The people who drive, obviously I came by train but if I was to have driven, I probably would have parked down here. And you can catch a train from the car park up to the other end of the park. There was a boat in Lake. I didn't really have a look at it because it was raining so much. But I noticed there is a boat in Lake and various other activities. So this railway performs a full service. If you arrive by car, you take the train to the other side of the park. Or if you just come by car today, you have a nice ride on the train. So we're just coming up to the station now. And I'm just here, looks like there's a train departing. Yes, it's Old Rosie which we had a ride behind. So let's watch her go past and then we'll go and have a look at the station. Something else running behind Old Rosie. Looks like they're having a bit of fun with them taking their skates and for a ride. That's quite amusing. Anyway, what we're going to do, let's have a look at the station up here. And the reason I want to show you this station is it's something unique. As in it's a former station we're quite used to on the national network. Whether we use them or we're just on the train and our train happens to stop at one. Let's just check. So crossing, yeah, no trains coming. We probably all use or pass through these stations. But have we ever seen this station at a miniature railway? Walking up here, I think this might be unique this station. The reason why I'll show you what the name is. The station is called Swanly Parkway. Is this the only parkway station on a miniature railway? I certainly can't think of any others. There might be others that perform a similar function but to actually have the station with a parkway name, I think is unique. Of course, if you don't know of any others, please do comment and tell me. Here comes a tinkerbell just arriving. If you know of any other parkway stations on a miniature railway, then do let me know. But I think this may well be unique. I think that train's stopping. So, yeah, that's exciting. Last time I visited a parkway station, or one of the newest ones, it wasn't actually the last one, but it was in Kent, was a fanate parkway. If you want to see that, have a look at the link on screen now. I went to a fanate parkway station earlier in the year. Here you can see it's quite a gradient coming down here. So when you're on the trains, they're not really working particularly hard here, but it's down. And then when I get round the corner, the gradient begins because obviously the other station is at the top of the hill. So the second part of the ride I found more exciting because the logo was really having to work hard to get up that hill. What I think we'll do now, we'll perhaps just, I'm either going to wait for a train or walk back and just watch trains really and then maybe have another ride. Well, having had fun riding the trains, I've just been in this little cafe here, got myself a coffee. The railway station is literally there next door. So when you come to this park, the other things you can do here, if you've got young children over there, there are some children's paddling pools. And there's a lake, as you can see, there's these swambo, so you can have a bit of fun on the lake. And if you've come by car, you would have taken the train from the parkway station to the railway station here. You can just see this steam rising up from there. So that's how, you know, this railway is great and it really does perform an actual function. If we have a look here at the station, there's a diesel train arriving. What I really like about this junction though as you go out is it's possibly one of the busiest miniature railway junctions there is. Look, I mean what we've got going on now, we've got this double departure now. I think, yeah, one steam train is going into the head shut and the other is going off with a passenger train. So what happened is when the trains get to the end of the line, the loco goes off on the turn there. We use this track here to run round and then they run up to a head shut. There's a loco up there now and then they reverse down onto one of the trains and then they depart with passenger trains. You can just see trains going off over there. So it's really, really quite exciting. It just seems there's constant activity, don't they? Diesel train, you can see the passengers look like they're really enjoying themselves. So I've had a really good afternoon here. If you'd like to come and visit this railway, then, you know, they run, I think, pretty much every weekend, probably from Easter to the end of October. So do come and visit them. I've really enjoyed it here. So thank you very much for watching. Please do feel free to like, subscribe and comment in those little tinkerbell reverses onto a train. Goodbye.