I catch the train to Swindon and hop on a bus to the greenery around Coate Water to start a walk following the route of the former Midland & South Western Junction Railway, that once ran from Cheltenham Spa to the port of Southampton on the South Coast of England.

The Route now forms part of National Cycle Route 45, which runs from Chester to Salisbury.

#railway #abandoned #swindon

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Welcome. Welcome to West Country Wanderings and welcome to another one in my railway series. In fact, it’s Lost Railway Walks number 21. It’s a line or rather a rally which we’ve covered previously here on West Country Wanderings and it’s the Midland and Southwestern Junction Railway which ran from the town of Chelin and Spa to the port of Southampton. How did this all come about? Well, I have touched on the history of it so I’m not going to recap what I’ve done. I’ve done a video looking at Sirencester water mall station there in the county of Glostershare. They had some brilliant workshops there which were there for many many years. So that was like a center of operation and also here at the town of Swindon. That’s where we are today in the county of Swindon. I’m about 3 miles to the southeast of Swindon Town Center. It’s a beautiful day. I’ve caught the train to Swindon from where I live in Glstershare. Hopped over to the bus station and then a bus. There’s a bus literally every 10 minutes to here at a place called Coat Water. Now, that lake over there was built not for a railway, but for something else we cover here on West Country Wanderings quite often, and that’s a canal. And the canal was, yes, you know it, of course, the Wilts and Barks Canal. When the canal closed in 1914 round about there, this land here and the water park was given over to the people of Swindon. So through Swindon Burough Council and that’s still the case today some 115 years or 110 years should I say 11 years later. It’s often been voted the most popular place for Swindonians I think that’s what they call residents of Swindon to come and visit. And I can see exactly why that is. Literally a 10- 15 minute bus ride from the town center brings you here. It’s absolutely beautiful. Just over there, nothing to do with our railway though is a springboard, jumping springboard. You used to be able to swim in the lake here and it’s an art deco springboard which takes you right would have taken you right into the water here, which is nice and cooling. Now, our railway didn’t actually run through Coat Park itself. It went over a little bit further to the east heading south out of Swindontown Railway Station. So, it had its own station. Nothing to do with the present day GWR when on the main line between South Wales and Paddington, but its own for reasons I’ve mentioned previously. But we’re going to touch on another part of the history of the MS SWJR here. It’s always a mouthful because of the tunnel. We’ll talk about that. But the line went over there and we’re going to be picking up the line towards the M4 which also links into the story of the railway because there’s a connection between the two. And then going to be following the line of the railway to a village called Chiseldon. Now I’ve got lots of old black and white photographs of the railway in that area around Chiseldon. I know the station is no longer there, but I’m hoping to see the landscape of where the line went to cuz it’s really interesting around there. and uh see if we can relate to some of the old black and white photographs from the book I’ve got in my rrook site. So I’ll show you that in a bit. But before we leave coat park and heading south along the old railway track bed, there’s something of railway interest. Now one time you had extensive railway engineering workshops of course by the GWR not our railway M and SWJR say they were mainly at Science there. But I think these days this is the only surviving turntable in and around the Swindon area. As I say, we’re about three miles southeast of the town. And you have this brilliant miniature railway. It’s not running today, but it does run every Sunday in the summertime and also bank holidays as well. Got a lakeside signal box there. That’s brilliant, isn’t it? I’ll just show you some other bits of it. I think that’s where they store all their engines there. and it’s a great location on what’s next to the railway here. As I say, I think it opened in the early 1970s. If you know more information about how it started, please drop a comment in the video below. Let’s just have a quick more of a look around it before we head south. So, here we have this uh level crossing here as a minor track that takes you into the site. I can’t go through that. It’s uh obviously it’s all locked up when it’s not in use for security reasons, but obviously when it’s open, they allow passengers in there. And the track goes through this delightful wooded section here, coat water, which is a country park as well as a lake. I think there is a like a small arboritum here as well with a collection of trees. It’s very nice. It’s always difficult covering these when they’re in action though because they attract attract a lot of young children and because of the nature of the locomotives and size of the carriages. It’s virtually impossible not to film children on it as I experienced recently when I was at Pecarama in East Devon. But I have covered previously one at Stratford Park and also at Eamale light railway. So we’re going to leave the miniature railway behind us now. Nice that it is. Let’s see if they got a website I put a link to. I think they may have a a Facebook page. We’re going to head southeast now to Chiseldon. Now, just I’m heading south here through Coat Water. Yeah, I’ve just noticed this line of fence. Now, this doesn’t indicate the line of the railway, but they obviously utilize the rails when they were taken up by the middle and southwestern junction railway to build this fence because obviously this land here is council own land for the people of Swindon. that over there heading over south towards the Marbor Hills is obviously agricultural private farmland that’s the boundary and what they obviously decided to do was use the old rails when they were lifted now in terms of lifting the line closed in the well we we’ll talk about that but the line led on or the it was redone in the early 1970s when they were building the M4 motorway south of this town of Swindon here we’ll be walking towards in the general direction of junction 15 but while were building that between the the 1970s. They were utilizing part of the track bed and the railway itself of the Midland and Southwestern Junction Railway. I never seen any photograph if you’ve ever seen a photograph of that being in use with the railway and the M4 being built. I’d love to hear from you because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one, but uh indeed that was the case, which of course bit of an irony because the roads were kind of the death nail to this rail line and many others. So, our lake is over there, which is quite difficult on a warm day. Good to see people out enjoying it. As I say, you can get here easy using public transport. That’s the book I’m going to be using. Now, I’ll do a there. There we go. That is so it’s the Midland Southwestern album. I think it’s book one of two. I picked this up for the grand price of £150 in the Cotzwood Canals bookshop in Brimskum there by Brimskum port. I’ll be referring to this, but the photographs in this, which I’ll be putting up on screen throughout today’s video, are truly remarkable. Story of the Midland and Southwestern Junction Rail. I can’t remember if I covered the real real beginnings of it, started in May 1872, meeting the hotel in Savake in Wiltshire, which is the county just south of where we are here today in Swindon. I think Chiseland is in Swindon as well, though it is quite a rural area. And that was brought about by one James Cobbston. He was a local solicitor. In fact, the house where he was living was eventually very close. I say eventually for reasons I’ll become clear to the Swindon town station which was the Midland Southwestern Junction Railway Station and lots of dignitarist businessmen got together there at Saver Lake not far of course from the the woods because of railway. Another railway had arrived obviously Brun now here in Swindon and it was taking their trade away from the people that living in Marbra and other places thereabouts. So Marbara felt quite isolated. The coaches that once went to Marra were drifting away because they were no longer leaded. All the action was between Paddington, Swindon, Bath and Bristol and on into South Wales completely bypassing places like Malbor. So they got together, had a meeting saying that we needed our own railway line. Now the act of parliament for opening the line was passed in 1873 with one Ambrose Lethbridge Godard who lives or lived should I say at the lawn here in Swindon. huge kind of park area there just on the edge of the old town town center and uh the solicitor our solister friend became the company solicitor of the the line now the company wasn’t actually the Midland and southwestern junction railway it was the Swindon Marra and Andover Railway because they had ideas to link Swindon to Marbra and Marbra to Andover and then down to the ports the coastal ports they thought Pete the Swindon would have interest in getting down to the ports because the GWR line went east west. It didn’t go north south. Now, there was a bit of a public falling out between James Cobblesson Towns End, the solicitor, and the Godard family. A lot of the directors were actually proposing that they sold the lawn here in Swindon where the Godards live because it would have made the route uh easier for them to go. But unfortunately, Godards wouldn’t sell. It had been in their ownership for generations. So they just wouldn’t release it. In fact, they give them a price of some £30,000. And back in 1873, that was a vast sum of money. So it meant that to get from Swindon, where the present day GWR station is, heading south to Marra, they needed to go through Swindon Hill, which meant, of course, building a tunnel underneath the hill, adding a huge cost and stretching the budgets of the burgeoning railway here. Now, construction of the tunnel started in earnest in October of 1875 near a part of Swindon known as Belle View. So, kind of to the east of the present day town center. Now, they utilized a contractor called William Wright, but because he was unsure of his tunneling and burrowing skills, he actually sublet the contract to a Mr. Young from the Leicester area, obviously in the East Midlands. The problem was the geology in that area wasn’t great. It was a mixture of liases and clays and that always creates a problem like we’ve come across previously the Sappitan tunnel on the temps and 7 canal but anyway construction started but it had to be abandoned many times when they started to build cutings towards water would have been come the portal signs of the the cutings started to come lapse and there were lots of tools buried in those lands slips just picked up a sign here saying coat to Hodson never come across Hodson before that’s not part of our walk. So there’s the lakes of coat water. We’re heading south down to a foot bridge over the M4 and then we’ll be going along towards Stockbridge Cops before we pick up the line of the old railway down to Chiselen which is here. Hodson is here. It’s suggesting doing that as a a 4 mile 2 and 1/2 hour leisurely walk cuz there’s a pub there in the Cali Arms Public House apparently. But this is really nice here because just to the right of where I am is a heronry and nature reserve bird hides in it which is down through there in what is known as Patty’s Cops. By the end of 1875 both Mr. Young and Mr. Wright were forced to admit defeat on trying to construct the railway tunnel underneath Swinden Hill. They gave up effectively handing over the contract back to the Swindon and Marburn Andover Railway Company. They then sought out a tender to try and get another contractor that would take the work on. But obviously word got round amongst all the building contractors because of the difficulty of the geology and nature of it that uh no one took work on. Rather than admitting defeat in having a backup plan rather than doing a tunnel, they solded on themselves using the Swindon Marandover Railway’s own workers. So that continued on through January of 1876, but unfortunately things just didn’t get bad better. It went from worse to worse. They started to rail rail rail rails even put them down. That’s the easy way of putting it. Put them down towards the portal. But again those uh slips and landslides were still happening and trying to cut through the difficult geology of that area. Now the construction works ground on throughout the summer of 1876 but progress was extremely so and the company themselves stopped by October of that year admitting complete defeat. In fact, the works in that area, that part of Swindon there, caused a great deal of inconvenience to the local residents and therefore a lot of bad feeling to the railway company. For many years after the abandoning of the works right through towards the 20th century before redevelopment started, the abandoned section of the tunnel, approaches to it, various cutings and also lots of tools just laid waste there. It appears on the 1885 ordinance survey maps. If I can find that and drop that in around now, but they could see the working and the cutting now, the approach to it. Of course, the area had to be infilled and I think that didn’t take place until the earlier part of the 20th century. So, how could they continue? Well, they decided then to do a new route. Now, we have looked at this before when I’ve looked at Swind a video called Swindon’s other railway. I walked from Rushy Plat there. You have that amazing skew bridge that the uh railway company built of deep red brick over the Wilts and Barks Canal and then striking up north towards the JWR mainland. We’re connecting into that and then going the other way into Swindon Town railway station which opened itself in 1881 to Great Fanfair. And then of course they were heading south on a slightly different route to where I’m walking to to the M4 now. Well, I can hear the rush of the M4 ahead of me, so I won’t assault your ears with that deafening road noise, but I will link to that video, Swindon’s other railway, which I did maybe 18 months ago now. It was problematic because I was trying to walk along the line of the canal in the northern part of Swindon up to Northern Hill Country Park where of course you have the present day Swindon and Cricade Preserve Railway which uses a section of the Midland and Southwest Junction Railway and uh it was problematic due to Temp’s water shutting off a lot of it because of pipe laying. But uh there we go. That’s what happens when you’re doing lost walks sometimes. But thankfully today it’s clear. So I’ll see you on the other side for the M4 and then we’ll be picking up the line of the railway that headed south to the town of Malra. Heat. Heat. [Applause] So, I’ve crossed over that spectacularly ugly concrete circular foot bridge. Well, the top of it isn’t, but the leading up to it. Obviously, that’s because of uh getting bikes up there. that this area here though it doesn’t look like it now was I think where the temporary lines or rails were laid to ease construction of the M4 to bring in aggregates tarmac and other materials that were required for building the M4 because our line which later became the Midland and Southwestern Junction Railway for reasons I’ll explain is along here and then the fence line over there I can make out a couple of old sleepers propped up right so at this point here the Sarsson way splits off going to that pot or something where the hamlet with a pub in it. So if you want to do that walk, you got strike out across the field there. But if you like walking old railway lines, this is now the track bed of the old Midland Southwestern Junction Railway from Chelinham to Southampton. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Now, you might be wondering why I didn’t start my walk today at Swindon Town Station to here and carry on to Chisel on that way. Well, as far as I can work out and from the research I’ve done, desktop research and old books and maps sort of thing, there doesn’t seem to be anything left of the route because Swindon later on obviously it became a railway town as we know with GWR obviously that was before the Midland Southwestern Junction Railway and later in the 50s and 60s it was designated a new town like other ones Milton Kees, Baseldon, Yate, Reddic all of the others and grew up rapidly. So there was a huge expansion of the town in the 60s which is of course after this line closed and a lot of it is just obliterated. It’s even obliterated as far as I can tell the route where it goes through to the east of the lake in Coat Park because of rellandscaping planting trees and of course all these trees here on the line of the railway here as we head south towards Chisdan have grown up since the railway closed. It’s difficult to make out the uh the track where the track bed would have been. Obviously, we know this is the route, but uh occasionally there are some fence posts which you can see in hedges which gives you confirmation that yes, you are walking along what was once a railway from Chelseam to Southampton. They may also slightly be confused if not one of these other ones in the Midland and southwestern junction railway series is why I keep referring to the Midland Marbor and Railway Company when it was known as the Midland and Southwestern Junction Railway. So how did that come about? Well, basically it was because the fortunes financial fortunes of the railway struggled after it opened. There was a branch line from Marbor to the Taton to Reading and London mainline, the cutoff line and uh but that didn’t really help Marbara’s fortune. So it was great that they had their own railway heading in a north south direction between Swindon down to Andover there in Hampshire which is obviously just outside West Country Wanderings region striking into more easterly route but it wasn’t enough and they had lots of rivals with the G the GWR were not their friends they weren’t very cooperative at all and charged them heavy rates and access charges for places like uh Rushy Plat there that we saw previously. Apologies for pronunciation in that video. I think I pronounced it rushly platt as as many of you that live in the area picked up. It is definitely rushy plat even. But uh yeah, so they thought the best way of improving reviving their fortunes was to connect up with the Midland Railway by striking north from the town of Swindon up to the town of Chelton and Spa in Glostershare there and joining the Midland Railway at Landstone station or junction before it via the village of Andoversford where there was already a railway line heading east from Chelinham to Banbury in Oxfordshire and it joined that one just before he got to Chelham and then joined up with Landstone station which is indeed the present day there’s only one railway station now in Chelham railway there and that did help the railway after a point it did struggle on with outdated locomotives and poor patronage by passengers but once it got the support of the Midland Railway and they did help it in fact they helped pay for the line to be doubled through much of its length from Chelinham to Southampton Hampton because it was of assistance to them that to get down to Southampton from their major industrial elges areas in the Midlands as well. And that’s what happened. It was a great savior of the line. So it’s quite noticeable here. They were on quite a bit of embankment there as you see with drops down both sides. So fair bit of engineering to get to Chisden. And when I arrived at Chisel, which is about another mile and a half, I think walking to go, it literally divided the village in half by going through a deep cutting. Although the station there, as I’ll insert now, was a rather attractive one. As I said, there no remains of it, but I’m going to see if we can find any other remains of this railway line, which was much loved. And um the one at Ogborne St. George, which we kind of did a walk. We went from Ogborne St. George area to the town of Marbor cuz then we had a look at uh the site of Marbor tunnel which I did find in that video and I’ll link to that one at the end of this one as well in case you haven’t seen that. Um yeah they were two similar virtually identical designs and very very attractive designs they were too complimenting the attractiveness of Chiselon village which hopefully we’ll see when we get there. I’ve never been to Chiselon before, so I’m just going by what I’ve seen from the book and uh from what I’ve seen on the internet. So hopefully it will be okay. I will stop there for a very very late Well, it’s almost like an afternoon tea, I think it will be. So just had a quick bite at 2:00 there. It’ll be about 4ish, I think, by the time I get to Chiselum and then walk back to Coat before I catch my bus. But a delightful place. Now I prefer doing these walks in during midweek. One of them is that on a Sunday the railway services are a bit unreliable as you probably know if you’ve caught a train on a Sunday recently often cancellations and also places like this because it’s leisure. This is the now cycle path between Swindon and Malra. Places like coat water at weekends will be much busier. So, it’s much more of a pleasure to do these during the midweek when it’s a lot quieter. Now, when I was walking along the track bed slightly over there, which is time out obviously by Sustrans, I think it opened in the early 2000s, possibly a millennial project. See if I can find out an exact date. I saw bits of a red brick wall. Well, I realize of course it’s not a red brick wall at all. The sustrans path goes on a slightly different route and the railway originally would have gone underneath here. So on a little bit of a cutting. Remember we were on embankment goes into a cutting and out through the other side because of this occupation bridge which is just an access path for a farmer’s field just that way. So that’s the line of our Midland and southwestern junction railway here which is parallel to the Sustrans route to where we’re going to and indeed onto Marra. Now the rally seems to be infilled at this point. In fact, they’ve infilled underneath that bridge and the cycle path and footpath goes on different routes. So they’ve raised it here. It’s going on a raised level and then it heads down this way. Not sure why they’ve done that and didn’t the route didn’t go underneath the bridge itself, which we’ve seen on other railway walks, of course. Maybe it was because the bridge was unsafe and they didn’t have the funds to restore it. It’s probably the most likeliest of explanations. We’re now on more substantial embankment and quite steeply up above the surrounding land on both sides. Very odd that bit there because the track bed in Vertic is doing that and obviously they balanced that with planting some new trees when the track was put in by Sustrans probably 25 or 30 years ago now. But uh it’s it’s good that the route is still open and this bit here we’re on an embankment and indeed a curve. You might you can see the curve behind me in the bankment now. We’re going to be on MVA curve and as we curving round into Chisel indeed um you get a greater sense of this was once a proper railway line. I’d like to thank a gentleman called Grant Bane for suggesting this video when I did my last one around towards Malra. He said there’s some things to look out for in the Chiselton area. Certainly was with that bridge parapit there, but as I say, shame that it was infill. Anyway, we’re going to continue on there. So, thank you for that, Grant. continue on here to Chiselan and see what we can find when we get into the village there. Now again here the Malbra cycle path diverges away from the route of the Milan Southwestern Junction Railway that the latter the railway curved away down there but our cycle path curves up here to get into the village. Not sure why that is. Maybe again to do with access rights. It looks like that is probably private down there. And I I think it’s blocked at the other end as well. So, we’ll need to continue on this way to get to the location of Chiselen Station. I’ll tell you more about the village as well when we arrive. Wow. I think you’ll agree this is a magnificent find here in Chiseldon. I didn’t even know about the existence of this bridge. Took a foot path down which picks up the line of the railway again. This bridge I think is an area of the village called Washpool. I’m not sure if we can get onto the top of the railway track bed up there. Some gates up there. See if we can go under the bridge and up around the other side. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] So this part of the village of Chiselman is known as Washpool and at one time a gentleman’s cottage he was called Daniel Weston that was demolished to build a railway here in 1881 round about the site there. This beauty spot’s hidden within a deep fold of the landscape. It is close to the center of the village as well. The name Chiselen incidentally comes from the Saxon CO cell at CEO seal Dean which means a stony and grally valley. It was also here there were lots of streams that at one time provided the water source for the village itself. Now, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to boil way up onto the track bed up there. It’s very overgrown here. There’s lots of nettles, and of course, I’m on my own, so if I slipped, be in real trouble. And as you can see there, there’s lots of dense vegetation. And on the other side, where it is a bit easier, there’s a fence as well. So, looks like there is private land up there, but not used for anything. Be good if it could be taken back into public use. So, what I am going to do is carry on walking along here at Washful, which is a delightful spot. I’ve got it all to myself. Just the sound of the birds in the little valley here with the old railway line to my right hand side. We’ll head in the direction of the church and see if we can find the location of where Chiseland station was here on the Midland and Southwestern Junction Railway. tell you a little bit more about the station here at Chiselton and as I say see if we can find the site and any remains of it and what it looks like today. So I’ve just come up that path there from Washpool and it brings you up onto the railway line, the track bed, middle of the Southwestern Junction Railway, which is just along there. Although it is private, you can see private just on that uh tree there. So I’m not going to walk down there, but if you carried on down there, that would indeed take you along the top of the bridge that we saw earlier. Let’s have a quick look in the opposite direction. It’s where things get really interesting. So there’s our access path there. So that takes you up into the woods and into a looks like a former quarry area. That’s our track bed again heading into the site of what was once Chiseldon’s railway station. Let’s go and have a closer look at that. So I’m currently standing on what would have been the track bed with two platforms either side at the site of Chisel station. Now see those houses on the right hand side. Now have a look at this photograph here. there. The lower one down there. See these cottages there? The ones there that are the same ones there looking in the other direction. So, let’s just spin round through 180°. The line of our railway actually went right through here, right where those houses are now. But if you compare it to the photograph which was taken, I believe in the 1890s, you’ll notice something. Yes. The road actually went over on a bridge over the railway tracks there. I thought it might have been a level crossing, but uh no, that’s the same view what it looks like today. What about the station itself, though? Well, in the upper photograph in the book, you can see the signal box there and the bridge that carried the road, minor road, and the railway going underneath. And again, that’s the present day view. Now the track bed into the Chiseldon station side actually came through that gate there. You can access it from the other side from where we were at Washpool up that path gets you to it. But you can’t walk either side of the track bed cuz that is private. It’s a property called Mount Pleasant. So let’s go back the other way. See if we can find any remains of that bridge. Before we get to the side of the bridge, there’s a small car park here off the green where the station was. And there is a wall there. That wall is part of the original station buildings back wall to it may even have been the corner of where the signal box once stood. Another thing I was looking for in this area is that that which is the station master’s house here in Chiseldon. Now is there any thatched properties in this area? Well, I’m just looking along the line of where the rally would have once been. Let’s just bring you up there and you’ll see a red post box and there’s some thatch cottages there. I don’t think that was the line of the station master site itself, but we’ll go over there and have a look. Now, I think this wall here adjacent to Chisdan’s post office was part of the railway cuz the railway was in a little bit of a cutting here in Chisdan. And I think that was built by the railway in the 1880s. And here, if I’m not mistaken, at the rear of the post office is some original railway fencing. So, there we are with our photograph of the bridge road. The wind’s taking the page. Road going overneath the railway. And that’s the abupment of our bridge there, which now forms the corner of Chiseldon’s post office. And now we’re looking down on the site of the railway station. And that’s in the back in the direction of the town of Swindon. You can see literally how lines being active here would have literally divided the village in half. And the station itself, that’s that post box I was showing you here adjacent to Straoud’s Hill. It commemorates Chisdan’s railway station. It was actually done by Chisan Parish Council and the Memorial Hall Fund a few years ago. It’s got some additional photographs here which I don’t appear in my book. That’s a great photo there of the station itself as has appeared on opening day in 1881. Staff of Chisel Station there in 1915. Last day of steam there. View from the bridge in the 1950s. And there’s that station master’s house there on the edge of the cutting which is just behind me. Although I don’t think the station master’s house it has survived but the thatched cottages behind it have. And there’s a plan which again doesn’t appear in my book of it. There you had a waiting shelter there. The main building and SB signal box. I think that’s the direction of Swindon there. Also here you had the elm tree in in this area. closed in 2000 down to 9. This here is station road next to the station. Here’s these thatch cottages and I think our station master cottage was on the opposite side. Now, this is the landmark hotel on the railway. Would have been a cutting just the other side of it. And uh sadly, I think that’s the location of our station master’s house, the one with Thatch Cottage. And you can actually see the cutting of the railway here running alongside where the present day hotel is today. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my 21st lost railway walk here on West Country Wanderings, looking back again at the route of the Midland and Southwestern Junction Railway. I’ll link to a couple of the other ones. I think I’ve done three others, the Watermour one, the Swindon one, and the one looking around Marbra previously, and I hope to do one looking at the northern end of this line north of Siren up to Chelenham in a future video. and perhaps one heading down towards Lugashaw which is just on the edge of the Hampshire town of Andover but also in Wiltshire which is close to but not quite into where we’ve been today here in Swindon. Until next time on West Country Wanderings, take care of yourselves, looking after yourselves and hope to see you on another railway series or indeed perhaps one of my other videos that I do across the wider West Country anywhere from the northern tip of Worersha right down to L’s End. I’ve done mousel recently. Also got a video coming up soon looking at Newin and Penzans. So we’ll be back in Wiltshire again before not too long. Until then, take care. All the best now. Bye-bye. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music]

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14 Comments

  1. What a lovely video. The wa.k was very scenic through beautiful countryside once the outskirts of Swindon were left behind.
    The artdeco diving board was a sight. More for looking at rather than using I guess
    The two bridges you found were very interesting. One infilled but it's parapits still visible whereas the second bridgeyou walked under was splendid. What a shameyou were unable to explore it
    Chilled village was lovely. The site of station thanks to those incredible photographs you inserted certainly showed us what the site originally looked like

  2. Hello Paul. I've always been puzzled as to how the railway got from Chiseldon to Swindon. The route gets very vague in that area. I've seen a picture of the station with a very deep cutting preceeding it. I always assumed this was looking towards Marlborough, but I was wrong! Then again, Chiseldon seems to be well above Swindon, so how did they get down into the Old Town.
    I once walked the line up from Ogbourne to Chiseldon. Here again, there is a huge difference in height between the end of the track way and the village.
    I enjoyed your walk up from Swindon, but sadly, I am none the wiser. Take care.

  3. Thank you for a very pleasant and interesting walk. DIfficult to imagine that Chiseldon once had a railway running through the middle of it – and not just a rural branch line, but a major railway linking it with the Midlands and the South Coast. The bridge, in that secluded valley in the heart of the village was a real find, though, as you say, it would be nice if it was accessible – asssuming it could be made safe. I remember, once taking a bus from Swindon to Chiseldon and walking to Barbury Castle and thence on to Ogbourne St George, which I believe was the next stop on the line towards Marlborough. It is great walking country, though I have yet to walk the line from Chiseldon to Marlborough.

  4. Yes, what a pleasant surprise that tunnel bridge was Paul. Very beautiful and just begging to be photographed. Absolutely lovely and serene walk. Thank you.👍

  5. Another great video on the MSWJR. I didn't know that the section from the M4 to Chiseldon was so well preserved. The little bridge at Washpool looks like quite a gem, as with most MSWJR railway infrastructure it was certainly built to last. 🙂

  6. Hi Paul, me and the missus watched this one, absolutely brilliant, loved every minute, so much info, but best of all was your enthusiasm, absolutely Fantastic! Great stuff, best wishes Darren 👍

  7. Hi Paul, That was a great walk you would never know there was an important line there at one time.

    That diving board, you don't see many of these, its quite a relic on its own.

    Very interesting story about the construction of the M4, maybe a photo will come to light, I hope so. I have a short clip of traction engines working in tamden to dredge a channel for, I believe, power cables crossing Portscreek, so far I've not been able to find anymore.

    Should you need to cross the border into Hampshire I am authorised to sign your visa!!

    All the best!!

  8. Hi Paul, I have a photo of one of the trains bringing in materials for the M4 construction in the early 70s if you're interested? Thanks for a very interesting video. Cheers

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