Langford and Beeleigh Miniature Railway - Episode 115 of Miniature Railway Britain.

Hello, thank you for joining me. I've just been out for a long drive in the Larder to Essex, to near Malden. Found another nice car to park next to. There's quite a big event going on around today. This is the Museum of Power and I've come here to have a look around the museum and have a ride on their Minutes Railway. So I'm going to make my way through the overflow car park and find a museum. I don't think I've ever seen quite so many motorbikes, literally hundreds of them. But my main reason for coming here was for the Miniature Railway. All the live music's great and everything but I can't really talk over it so I'm going to leave the event field now. I might come have a look here later and we're going to go over the river to the main museum. I wasn't actually aware all this event was coming. I just saw first Sunday of the month the Miniature Railway was running. I thought right I'm going to come and visit this Miniature Railway. So it does all look pretty good but I probably will do most of the event off camera afterwards because there's a lot to show you in terms of what is always here. So as I make my way around here, we go onto this bridge here. Excuse me please. Thank you. Here we are onto the bridge over the river Blackwater, one of many rivers in the UK and Ireland called the river Blackwater. The camera's not picking it and as we come over the bridge we get to where we first see the railway. So it's a seven and a quarter inch gauge railway. Not quite sure what we're going to see. As I drove along the road through there, I glimpsed a deltic so we might be going to see a deltic. Clearly no train coming so what we'll do we'll go. I can just see over there the camera over there. I just saw their heads going along as if a train was moving. Oh and by the way they've also got a model village here. We'll have a look at that afterwards and then the building in front of me that's the old pumping station that is the actual Museum of Power so we should also have a look around there. I'd sort of rush away from next like I said the live music it's good and everything but it also potentially could interfere with copyright. This is all really nice though. Suddenly feels a lot quieter because everyone who's here is over in the event. What have we got? This is the railway station Langford. There was of course a railway station called Langford on a nearby closed railway which I might go and have a look at afterwards. Oh look at this they've got a garret yeah and I did see a deltic. I drove along the road just down the other side of the fence. I did see a deltic and they've got a garret. Now that is very exciting. So it looks like we're going to go for a ride behind a garret. I've just bought my ticket. The lady's clipped it and we're about to go for a ride behind a garret. In the adjacent platform there is a deltic. We might have a ride behind that later before it goes out. As I said the station is called Langford. We might go and have a look at the original Langford station later on. Let's see how things go. I've just had a very enjoyable ride behind the garret called Battle. What we're going to do now we'll have a look around the museum. I've tried to time this when it's when most people are having lunch. Now it could be quite busy in there and one thing I'll probably do is some of the working exhibits. I'll film them again without me talking just so I can have a better way of showing it to you. So here we have the museum building in there. So we're going to go inside this big boiler here and then we can do a bit line siding. There's a boiler there and then there's the modern boiler house. The line basically just does a loop around the perimeter of the inner site. So interesting little railway. So we've got a huge boiler here. Now let's just go into the museum and let's see how we get on. Through here we can see various engines of various types all going around. Look at this. This is a heavy oil engine as you know because I just read that there. I find this kind of thing fascinating but I don't know about them like I do with railways and locomotives. I'll just let you have a look at that going around. Singleton in the diesel engine and then just around here I find this particularly fascinating. Look you've got a whole workshop, a belt driven workshop going around. You can see all the belts going around which wouldn't be allowed in today's workshop of today but I just find it fascinating seeing it all happening. Motor up there which drives it all. There's various other divots there. It's like a steam fairground. Quite a nice little model railway here. It's not going but tramway as well. See the trams. Great to see all those. We're now going to make our way through into the next talk so here we have. As I say I'm not so clued up as I am about railway engines. We've got a steam engine built. Oakland Gates and Shropshire. Now this does go. It's not going at the moment so what I think I'll do because this is sort of their main exhibit. It'll be fascinating to see all this running so I'll definitely come back and I'll put some captioning of. I'll put some footage of it all turning. I think it's turning. It's not turning now. You can see there have been two more. It's like you've got a show where the other two would have been so it's quite a fascinating museum. All sorts of things of days gone by. Cameras, old telephones. Oh this is cool. It's a model of Bradwell nuclear power station. On a previous time I bought my lard to Essex. I went and parked as near as I could to the old nuclear power station. Sometimes when I fly to Europe but it's usually the last thing in England I see and this is the turbine hall this building in the foreground. That's not there anymore and the Bradwell power station doesn't generate anymore. They might build a Bradwell B but we'll have to see on that one. So we've got various other exhibits. Vacuum cleaners. Irons. So it's all quite fascinating. Now we're down the other end of the triple engine. So like I say when all this is going come and have a look at this. Yeah it's fascinating to see those go. Various other exhibits. Engines out of Spitfires and cars. There's a few steam engines as other people look at them. So I'll take some pictures of those and insert them now. There you go. So you can see those. What I'm going to do now. This train is still over there so I think I'm just going to head around the back of the museum and do a little bit of line siding. So let's do some line siding. I'm in the middle of my line siding and waiting for the garage to come along. I found this really nice stretch of straight track in a corner museum in an orchard where no one really comes to. The river Blackwater down there. Where does the name come from Langford and Beely? Well Langford is the village which the museum is situated in and my plan is when I finish looking around the museum is to have a quick look at the village and hopefully go and find the old Langford station and Beely is a lock further down the river Blackwater. So that's where the name comes from. I'm going to wait for the garage to come along. I think I've probably seen the train at every possible line side point but there's something else here to see. Astaria. That is a model village. There we are look it says model village open. As you may have known if you've seen my videos I really enjoy going to model villages and I do some work at Beaconscot sometimes. So it's always exciting to see another one. Look at this, this entrance starts while walking down this tunnel of lights. Ahead of us is the model village. Now admittedly I have already been down here to have a look around. I mean there's bubbles coming up but there's bubbles below. I was having a chat with the gentleman who built it and he's actually very kindly given me permission to step off the path into the village. So I'm not just wandering around because I feel I can. I've been given permissions. There we are look at this. Very good to see a model village and it was quite interesting chatting to them. They've got the usual um some of the jokes if you have a look there. Some of the joke names. Now what he was saying see this building here this is made out of drinking straws. There's lots and lots of drinking straws. Now like I say I have been given permission to do this. I wouldn't normally just go wandering off the thing. Oh yeah this is the probably one of the most common model village models you get. A model of a model village. It's called uh Happylander since it's a fair isn't it. And then if we look at these it's like little houses all going up the tree. It's quite called a tree because you can see there's a big net over it so it saves them having to clear up the leaves. We should do that Becky's got. And then there's a stream running right through the middle of the model village. Even listening to water at this scale it's nice and relaxing. You can see how I am meant to be here because the police station and there wasn't a little policeman might have come out and told me to go away. There's a pub here look and uh it does free ale every Christmas day. Here's the local church here. Coming back up to um normal height. I'm gonna make my way out so like I say I was given special permission to do that which I'm very grateful for. See the broad air turning. Timber merchant. There's a signpost here. You probably can't see what it says. It says here is four miles. Everywhere is five miles and there is four miles apparently. Great view of the village. Epic just taken. Nice cool look. You dump it. That's w e labbit. You dump it and we'll have it. Another interesting building is this one just down here. See these two unfinished ones. I talked to a gentleman he said they're made out of um you know your coffee stirring sticks so they're made out of them so that's that's quite cool. So I'm gonna finish in here just let you see some views over the model village. I think it's pretty pretty cool. I always always enjoy going to model village considering how many there are and considering my involvement at Beckenscot I have actually been to very few. So great view over the village. Got one more thing I want to show you before I head back home. I came out of the model village and I've just a garret that's gone on shed. So it looks like the garret has finished its work for today but that must only mean one thing. I just heard the sound of a diesel loco. The deltic must be out. So I think it'd be rude not to go and have a ride behind the deltic. So I'm gonna make my way home to the station and see the deltic in action. As you can see I've now stepped out of the museum. This is St Giles church in the village of Langford. The reason I wanted to come here was because being called the Langford and Beely railway I wanted to show you the village of Langford and what I'm going to do I'm going to walk up the road and show you the old railway station here I'm a little bit further down the road now from the church. I've just come down this footpath. The road you possibly can hear is up there and hopefully we're going to find the old railway station. It says the Blackwater Rail Trail. Of course I work for Rail Trails but it's not where I'm coming from. Looks like old railway fence now. Yeah okay that's a bit of a shame what's happened here. They've had to fill the bridge and look and it all looks a bit ugly but I suppose maybe it was at risk I don't know but anyway here we have the station. Look I think the platform is genuine. Langford and Oopling station. So this was on the railway line from Wytham to Malden East. There's a bit of information here about the halt. There's a picture of it up there. Closed to passengers in 1964. Freight lingered on a little bit longer. So it's a shame. Malden's not the largest town in Essex without a railway station but it certainly is one of them. So it's a shame there's no railway to Malden anymore but it looks like I'm not going to do it today. It looks like you can continue on down there and you'd end up in Malden. I've shown you the Langford bit of where the miniature railway gets its name from. We've got one more thing to do. We've got to go and see where the Beely bit of the name comes from. In order to find the Beely part of the railway's name I'm doing this walk around Malden. So I went into Malden had a look around. Very nice town but I thought I'd be going off on too much of a tangent if I included that on the video. Now I'm actually not that far from the miniature railway having driven my car into Malden and come out but the Beely parts are there. I went past Beely Abbey. I'll show you a picture of that. And then this is Beely Falls. Maybe that's Beely Falls. This is where River Blackwater and River Chelman join each other. So anyway this whole area here this is Beely. You can see the water going that way on a hot day. It is quite a nice relaxing place to come and end the video. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you very much for watching. If you're thinking of visiting this railway just check the days and minutes railway runs. It doesn't run every day. The Museum of Power is open and I did check the buses. Unfortunately there's no Sunday service to Langford so you could get a bus into Malden and walk. I've seen plenty of buses in Malden and you can walk the way I'm walking. It's a very pleasant walk but be prepared if you're coming without a car to walk quite a long way. Anyway I hope you enjoyed the video and thank you to everyone at the museum for a great day. Please do feel free to like, share, comment, subscribe and from the Beely Falls which the railway takes half of its name from goodbye.