The Bristol Railway Archive

BristleGWR wrote:

Robin Summerhill wrote:...... I put my Surveyors hat back on and concluded that you could actually run a branch from somewhere near Flax Bourton up to the airport with a ruling gradient of 1 in 50. The S&D managed that with steam so I am sure that present day diesels and electrics would have no problem getting up it!

I like the idea, but looking at an OS map I can't see an easy route from Flax Bourton to Lulsgate. What route were you thinking of taking on your survey??

It would not be an easy route from the point of view of earthworks because you would have to take the line from c. 100 ft above sea level at Flax Bourton to around 540ft at the north west edge of the present car park to the north of the terminal, so a rise of some 440ft. To do that on a ruling gradient of 1 in 50 you would need a line just over 4 miles in length.

To do that (and all this is coming from the OS map and Google Earth, not going out and looking on site - I did enough of that on the "Location Quiz" thread ) you would need a line on a gentle curve starting from somewhere near Station Road at Flax Bourton, then passing to the south east of Backwell, a tunnel under Blackwell Hill then passing just to the south of Downside before arriving at the terminus to the north of the existing northern car park.

There are no doubt 101 other routes you could take to get a railway up there, and in the real world you would need to take into account such things as SSSIs, existing developments, planning restrictions and NIMBYs, but this is just an internet forum where I am idly musing and doing some very very basic research!

But to play devils advocate on a railway forum for a moment, the Powers That Be would probably find that most people would still want to go by car anyway, so a more environmentally friendly thing to do for most of the inhabitants of the area to the south of Bristol would be to build a dual carriageway from the eastern side of the M5 junction 20 (Clevedon) almost in a direct line to the airport, crossing the A370 near Chelvey Batch. Such a road would be just over 6 miles long.

Its not as daft as you may think, if you cast your minds back in to not too distant past think of the chaos caused on the M5 when they have had to shut the Avonmouth bridge. Traffic off at bridgewater A38 into Bristol and out again. The land is reasonbly flat so no big hills for our lovely HGV'S to slow up on.

stopblock wrote:It was mainly the Stoke Gifford residents who objected as they were under the flight path comming into Filton.

Filton would have made a fantastic international airport. Unfortunately, the residents of Stoke Gifford had assurances that the airport would not be developed when their homes were built. I believe they even managed to get the agreement written into their deeds. Therefore there was no appeal made when planning permission was rejected. <BJ>

stopblock wrote:Its not as daft as you may think, if you cast your minds back in to not too distant past think of the chaos caused on the M5 when they have had to shut the Avonmouth bridge. Traffic off at bridgewater A38 into Bristol and out again. The land is reasonbly flat so no big hills for our lovely HGV'S to slow up on.

There are a couple of hills on the A38 which do slow down HGVs...regardless of the lower speed limits in force.

Shute Shelve and Redhill are two that come to mind.

Plus, I dont fancy the hassle of a road from the M5 to Bristol Airport. You can be sure that they will not pay for it, they get far too much support from the various official bodies as it is....
Coming across from Clevedon through Chelvey will ruin the countryside and it hardly fits in with the "green image".

Some of us actually live on your projected route !!!

carpetcone wrote:Plus, I dont fancy the hassle of a road from the M5 to Bristol Airport. You can be sure that they will not pay for it, they get far too much support from the various official bodies as it is....
Coming across from Clevedon through Chelvey will ruin the countryside and it hardly fits in with the "green image".

Some of us actually live on your projected route !!!

You will be pleased to hear that I hold no position of power at all in the local council, the Highways Agency or Bristol Airport

Slightly off topic, but in relation to HGV's on motorways, I heard an interesting and amusing definition the other day:

The smallest recognised unit of speed is the Stobart. One Stobart is the rate at which one HGV overtakes another on a UK motorway. One Stobart is equal to 0.000000016587 miles per hour.

Well, I found it amusing

The original plan for the Long Ashton bypass was to continue from Flax Bourton to join the M5 at Clevedon

jolly47roger wrote:The original plan for the Long Ashton bypass was to continue from Flax Bourton to join the M5 at Clevedon

That plan was dropped in the late 1960's or early 70s. I once chatted to an ex council senior roads engineer who told me that it was solely lack of cash that caused the cancellation of that scheme.
The local urban myth was that Lord Wraxall objected to a motorway running in front of his house.

This plan was possibly also the reason why the Clevedon section of the M5 towards WsM is wider to allow for a flying junction.