The Bristol Railway Archive

Ah, Severn Beach. or Severn Mud as it was known in our family!

The train service from either direction, which I faintly recall from before much was closed, was essentially run as two separate services which happened to meet there. If trains were run through round the circle, it was just an ...

Thank you Trafalgar (I'm sure I had your namesake underlined in my ABC!) for the time in doing these notes.

I never had a chance to take the passenger train from Whitchurch Halt, unlike my elder siblings who spoke about it, but I do recall being directed to the house rear windows to see the last ...

We left Bristol, and our house in Whitchurch which backed onto the Radstock line, towards the end of 1962. However the two regular locomotives from this line, 4103 and 4131, are still apparently in the city in 1964, although they have moved on from SPM to Barrow Road. I can't find any reference to ...

If you have a look at the Old-Maps website

http://www.old-maps.co.uk/maps.html

you can see historic detailed OS maps, although the interface is rather tedious.

Durston does not really seem to fit at all. The train is curving slightly to the right, which could only be an up train on the Yeovil ...

It is true that the allocation history is central accounting records, and can be quite different from reality, especially when conformance to central budgets for locomotive costs needed to be controlled in an ingenious manner.

However, there were many moves round the system as well. One account I ...

Shirehampton station --- a few coal merchants I think. It was probably a base for Rudrums - who are still going strong and are still based in Shirehampton (See
http://www.rudrumholdings.co.uk ), though they have obviously diversified a lot since those days! I'm going to contact them and ask if ...

Can anyone confirm night (or evening) engine testing at Filton?
Yes they did. In the late 60s-early 70s I used to visit family who lived in Little Stoke, in the houses built on the east of Little Stoke Lane which looked towards the plant, and recall this happening in the evening.

The test plant ...

I can only round out by having known someone from Wick in Scotland, where I found the expression of "going down south" was local talk in the town for going to their major shopping centre, which was Inverness. Anywhere else was mentioned by name.

Having lived in Taunton in the 1960s-70s, I sometimes idled my time on the footbridge across the line about 1/4 mile west of the station, locally known as Fortysteps. A great vantage point. Can someone tell me how the signals were arranged.

There was a signalbox just under the Staplegrove Road ...

Those years at Taunton coincided with regular visits there by me. I was probably looking across into the box at you from time to time, although favourite was the long Fortysteps footbridge west of the station.

You could get advance notice of up trains from that bridge as, provided you knew where to ...

Anyone remember Fred Tjolle (pronounced "Jolly") who was a Bristol driver in the 1950s? He then became a holiday tour organiser who specialised in trips to his native Belgium, and these were sold heavily to railwaymen of all grades who took advantage of their privilege tickets for the travel element ...

And didn't the Cheltenham - Honeyborne line close prematurely after the derailment of a goods train in August 1976, primarily I think due to track movement - a problem that besets the heritage G/WR to this day?
The freight lines around Carlisle station were similarly abandoned in the 1984 after a ...

[In those days, as a general rule, when something went seriously wrong with a railway line (be it landslips, embankments collapsing, bridges being washed away, whatever), the Engineers were usually out virtually immediately putting it right. This never happened in the case of the Severn Bridge.

I ...

I have a few questions from this time if we don't mind.

In Temple Meads on an afternoon, which must be either 1961 or 1962, I can recall there was a down arrival of a two-car GWR railcar set. Can anyone identify which were the cars (there was probably only one such set), where it had come from ...

Taunton also had four class 03s allocated there for a long time. These had no duties at Taunton, but were all operated down at Bridgwater at the docks (which must have therefore been a sight busier than they are now). I believe there were no fuel facilities at Bridgwater so each in turn would waddle ...