Name: The Bus Replacement Rail Service (yes, that's the right way round)
Uploaded: 2020-04-01T01:09:17.000Z
Duration: 2 min 21 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In Britain, the words "rail replacement bus" are not good words to hear.

It means the train you wanted to take isn't going anywhere,

Transition words & phrases

and instead everyone is going to have to get on a slow and lumbering bus

that will take at least twice as long and be so much less comfortable.

If you've already left the first station,

then the rail company is required to get you to your destination...

Rail replacement buses are the train traveller's nightmare.

Which is why I was surprised to learn that, for just a few days,

things were happening the opposite way around:

here, between two remote villages in the lowlands of Scotland,

there is a very rare sight: the bus replacement train.

The normal schedule here is to run every weekend, usually from Easter to the end of September.

The bus replacement service was an idea that was born out of some discussions

between some villagers and the volunteers on the railway,

and then once we realised there would be enough volunteers to run this week,

we devised a timetable, and we've now got a daily service for this week.

The B797, the tiny road between Leadhills in South Lanarkshire

and Wanlockhead in Dumfries and Galloway,

is shut for resurfacing. The diversion takes about 45 minutes by road...

but by luck, there happens to be a volunteer-run, narrow-gauge railway between the two.

There's all volunteers, there are no paid employees at Leadhills at all.

Tomorrow, I'll be the guard, but today, I'm the driver.

It's being used by people going to the doctor's surgery,

for people commuting to work at the Museum of Lead Mining.

And yes, it looks a little bit ridiculous.

And it's not often you'll find that a disruption to your journey

The response has been great so far this week.

The villagers are enjoying it, and we've also had a few extra tourists

that we wouldn't normally get on a weekday coming to see us.

Thank you to everyone at the Leadhills and Wanlockhead railway!

If you're watching this video on the day or so after it goes up,

there may still be time to travel on this service!

Details and a link are in the description,

along with the dates when they're running steam trains on the track this summer.

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