Exploring Beamish - The Living Museum of the North!

As I said here is the shed and over there is the replica of the Puffin Billy so we’re going to go and have a look at that it looks like it has finished running for the day so I’ll make my way across the yard be able to show you a train from a very very different era to what we’re used to today! So have a look, sitting next to these lumps of coal, look at that! Something very different so that that was a good loco to ride behind it was my first winning steam loco of 2021 and only my second winning logo of 2021 my last loco I had was at Hayling Island for that was my only other winning loco so far 2021.

If you want to see the one I had it Hayling Island, have a look at another link on the screen now. But there we are how’s that for a train something’s very different that was first I’m assuming that was the First Class, I was there I was in the car called Brampton which I spouse is second or third class but it was fun for the short trip. So what I’m going to do now I’ll show you a few other things as there is like I said there is so much I cannot possibly show you everything around here it’s quite interesting that we can have a look at some examples of rolling stock here’s some wagons and what we’re gonna do we’ll go in there because there are some interesting things there so I’m just gonna have to stop a moment while I put my face covering on to go inside.

02:25 - There we go so let’s have a look see what is in here Obviously you can’t smell it but there’s a really nice smell of burning coal but have a look in here.

02:41 - Here is another interesting old carriage that’s the engine says that’s where the Puffing Billy replica will go when she’s finished running for today here we have a stationary engine there’s a little office here.

03:01 - It looks like a model of the Steam Elephant I think so what I’m going to do now I’m going to go back out of here and I’ll show you a few other things around the site that was very interesting and take my face coming off and they have now shut the yard up because I think they’re putting the train away so perhaps we’ll see the train be put away when I had my trip on the wagon way I made a separate video so if you have a look at the link on screen now you can see that video so I think the train has gone off now um they might be putting it they are going to be put away but I think the time’s running out so I’m going to have to have a look around the site so I’m going to go now and show you a bit more around Beamish.

03:50 - This is one of the many tram stops at Beamish, the tramway forms a circular running all the way around the site and they’re not running today which I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, I am! You know there might be a good reason why they’re not running and with all the social distancing and the pandemic although they were running buses so yeah um don’t like to be negative in my videos but I can’t really not say I’m not disappointed I’m you know quite disappointed trams aren’t running but anyway no doubt I’ll probably come here again so you know and I have had a ride on the wagon way so that was good fun so you know it’s been a really good day but riding a tram would have just like made it a perfect day! So the tramway goes up there I’m not gonna walk around there because the the tram’s not running so and you know I’ll take you through the woods it’s pretty hot day today as well so nice to walk through the woods we’re going to go and have a look at the colliery and then we’ll walk through and my aim is basically to take you through the site back to the car and I think probably what I’ll do in the future I’ll come here again maybe another time I’ll make videos just on the tramway and maybe I’ll just make a lot of footage without me talking I have to see really when I next come up here but you know it’s been somewhere that’s been on my list now for so long I’ve always wanted to come here and here I am I’m finally here and it was it was really nice to display my Lada here today have all the public seeing it and everything seeing all the other cars so it was nice to see such interest taken you know in the Eastern Bloc cars so that’s been a really nice thing of today, but i said a bit disappointed tram’s not running but anyway I won’t keep going on about that because you know let’s just focus on what we have got so this is the colliery now earlier on you could walk around here you could go up there it looks like I can’t complain this time they’ve posed it because like I said most people have gone um this is the end of the day I couldn’t really have made a video earlier today it was so busy which is good you could see it’s busy but it wouldn’t really work to have made videos but you could go up there so you can see the pit head gear sort of a big steam engine in that building there that’s where the shaft would have been and then this bridge would have carried the wagons out across there so that’s quite interesting and down here so this is the second railway of the day we’ve seen the wagon way second and third, there’s some system of two foot narrow gauge and as you can see there’s a armoured diesel loco there we’re now going to walk across the standard gauge railway lines.

06:32 - There is another steam loco I can show you and in the engine shed up there there’s quite a few steam locos which I did go in earlier so we can’t go in there now it won’t matter because I’ll just have I’ll just put some pictures if I if I can we can go in there we will. Let’s see so this is the colliery village or the colliery village is just down there and there’s also the town so there you are there’s an industrial steam loco.

06:59 - This whole area reminds me last time I went to a colliery like this was Banavici in Bosnia Herzegovina and that was great seeing Kreigsloks pulling out the colliery with a long long train. So yeah that was the last time I came anywhere like this. So in that shed there there are steam locos what I’m going to do because they’ve closed I shall insert some pictures now.

07:40 - So there you are there’s some of the steam loco we’re now going to walk through the colliery village and I’ll show you a few things along there then we’re going to head up towards the town hopefully we’ll have a look at the other railway station that wasn’t running there’s a Methodist church.

08:01 - If you want to see inside here’s some pictures.

08:13 - So there you go that was the inside of the Methodist church these cottages are nice for their cottage gardens.

08:25 - So I’m going to follow the road up here this is the Beamish school so again I did go into school earlier on so here’s a picture of a classroom in the school.

08:44 - So there you go next pictures classroom in the school so yeah school is there so the tramway which circumnavigates the site it runs around there they they were running buses I did have a trip on the bus only went halfway around the site because when he got there he said oh we’re terminating and I said can I have a ride back down to the town because he was going to pick another lot up he said no which seemed a bit unreasonable anyway I don’t know why maybe he had a good reason.

09:20 - There’s another little narrow gate railway in the middle of the site though there appears to be like another functioning farm that’s kind of not part of the site which is so it’s an interesting place it covers a very vast area and like I said because of the pandemic not everything’s open i think as times gradually get back to normal I’d like to think you know um it will go completely back to normal and we will be able to have tram rides I don’t think all the railways possibly ever did run on one day um so this is the colliery railway the standard gauge line comes to just down here so this one doesn’t ever do passenger rides there’s no station it’s whenever it does runs purely demonstrational so I can’t complain about not having a ride on that one it’s interesting I don’t know if you can see it but down there they appear to have laid some two foot narrow gauge in the middle of the standard gauge track I did as I said in the engine shed on the low because we saw it was a two foot narrow gauge so as we come up here up there is the home farm so you get to see how farm used to look that way would take you back to the main entrance i never actually saw the main entrance because i came with the eastern bot club club so um you know i didn’t get a chance to see that so there’s a bus stop here some people waiting to get a bus to get home or get back to the carpark it might be because it’s the end of the day they’re using the buses to get everyone out so they don’t really want you know to take people in here there’s a sign says trams run each direction every 20 minutes not today! They didn’t but this is a passing loop here so I suppose a tram would come stop here tram will come the other way and they would pass each other so um yeah we have to come back here when they’re running the trams um because to me the trams the trams are the most interesting feature they have here this is the tram depot um which we can’t really see much of so I’m not gonna sort of disappoint the viewers but I’m we’re not gonna go any closer to that because you can just glance in the door and you might you can see i got the numbers of a couple of the trams but it’s not quite so interesting when you can’t receive but we can go in here into the bus garage.

11:48 - These buses are really nice it’ll be nice again it’s probably because of coved so I can’t complain too much but on a hot day like today having a ride around the site upstairs on on one of those open top buses that would be really really nice maybe another time. I’m sure you know things will get back to normal and we’ll be able to come to places like this again so I’m going to head down there’s something just around the corner I would like to show you so I should show that to you and then my aim is to finish down by the town and then eventually we’ll go and find my car so the tramway goes this way I’m gonna walk along this path a little way and see what else we can find just up the path from here we have a couple of interesting things to see we have this huge excavator it’s massive there’s enough to work at one of the mines around here pretty hard to convey just how big it is but maybe if I go to the bucket the excavating bucket and stand by it have you got any idea now how big this is.

It’s huge you know it’s just just massive is that one of the buses let’s just go and see one of the buses go past there goes the bus go past.

13:10 - Its an ex Darlington bus now I think i was going to show you I don’t know too much about it but it’s a locomotive so it’s interesting it’s this little thing here little industrial electric loco.

13:28 - So it’s just here on a plinth but probably I don’t know too much about its history but pretty worked in the colliery in the area but that’s quite cool little thing you see the pantograph folded down on the top. See it says NCB so National Coal Board, it was number two so there’s an electric loco that’s probably the only electric traction we’ll see in this video. Right what else have we got around here yes there’s a couple of things around here again there’s something else that’s not running but if it was running it would be you know to me as exciting as the trams it’d be pretty amazing, just go past here here we have a miniature railway which unfortunately isn’t running it hasn’t run for a while again pandemic interfered and yeah but if that was running that would be great and there’s it’s not any old miniature railway it has a rack and pinion section which I can’t show you because it’s right around the corner.

14:43 - That one says Rotherham on the front so as we come down to this avenue down here this is where the events field is which is where the where we’re having our rally where the cars are.

14:59 - It looks like some of them are starting to go and is the end of the day so what we’ll do if we look over there you see in the distance I’m gonna continue down I’ve come up to the other end of Beamish now this is the town park and this is the town so what I’m going to do I’m going to show you around a giant gun here show you the town and then we’ll have a look at the other railway station and then like I said it’s time for me to go so it’s it’s quite nice at this time today earlier on it was heaving which was great to see so many people enjoying themselves and i had a there’s a pub up here called the sun in I had a pint there well you can actually sit inside had a pint and sat on the bench and that was really enjoyable I had to have it quite early in the day though because driving home i had to have it as sort of eleven o’clock so it’s way out of my system for when I go to drive this is here we have a whole town set in the 1930s which i think is really.

16:31 - I didn’t worry about one of the things I was quite happy to give a miss I think I can live without some old fashioned sweets so yeah co-operative that’s why i had a point so I’m in it was quite interesting at the very beginning of the day i had a look in some of these so there was a dentist and there was a solicitor, so you can go in the houses so there really is so much to do I’d almost say i mean personally i have found too much to do which is not a bad thing at all it’s good but there’s just so much to see here i find i need more today here comes that Darlington bus again.

17:12 - Two buses. So yes, there’s a lot a lot going on and today is a day where you know not everything is open so if you came here on the day when everything is open I think I would need at least two days and they are also building a whole 1950s town which is going have trolley buses so you know that’s really exciting but I’m thinking well for me I need another day so I’m gonna say when the new town is finished the 1950s sounds finished you’re going to need at least three days here today I’ve just about seen everything i want to see so I suppose I know I complained a bit earlier about the trams not running if I want to put a positive spin on the fact that the trams weren’t running it’s given me time to see everything else so I think the trams were running I’d have spent a lot of time tram bashing and I just simply wouldn’t have had time to see everything so yes I suppose it’s not all bad that not everything was operating.

There’s also a fairground which I didn’t go in I wouldn’t minded to go on the healter skelter but anyway I didn’t. A nice bridge here though over the railway line there is Rowley station so sometimes they do rides from this railway station up another railway so this is more typical railway of the North East in steam days so you get on a train there and it takes you up around the corner it goes for about a quarter of a mile half a mile so that’s a that would be quite a nice ride but I think with this one yeah with social distancing I’m not sure what coaching stock they’ve got but I understand it’s not easy so that’s why that’s not running.

So I have to come here i have to come here like lots more times to do all of all these other railways they’ve got it’s it really is a great place but like I said you just need a long long time to visit and I’ve been here since nine o’clock this morning the site opens at 10 to visitors because i was displaying a car we had to be in by 9:45 with our cars displayed so I had extra time as well I haven’t seen everything so you know that that’s a good thing that there’s that much here to see.

You know that you need that long anyway we’re gonna have a look at the railway station which is down here onto the platform so we’re not gonna catch a train here but we can have a look this station building the name has slipped my mind but I’m obviously on screen now that is where this station came first taken down brick by brick and rebuilt here there we have the goods yard and um yeah that’s looking looking up the hill which when trains running you get to ride on there’s the ticket office.

20:00 - I think what I’m going to do though like I said it’s the end of the day so I’m going to I was going to go out there and lock that gate i was going to go over the bridge I’m going to have to go back out the way i came so i think really now time has come to end this video so from a railway station thank you very much for watching i hope you enjoyed this video do come and visit Beamish although the one thing I’d say if you want a particular to do a particular thing say like the tramway perhaps check they’re running I mean I came for the Eastern Bloc Car Rally so I was going to come no matter what’s running but yeah if you do want to do the trams or a particular railway get a particular loco it might just be worth ringing them and seeing if they can tell you first before making the trip that’s the only thing I would say other than that I really have had a great day and there’s really so much to see.

So thank you very much for watching, please do feel free to like subscribe and comment from Rowley Station at Beamish, thank you very much, goodbye. .