The Bristol Railway Archive

Just been down in the filthy weather to St Andrews Road to see anything was happening.....result was nout at all.

The usual stock wasnt in the yards and the lines all had STOP signs as if there was an engineers possesion.



I did notice the adjacent coal storage area was being work hard with delivery after delivery of lorry load of coal.

Is it on Summer shut down or somthing on the assumption of our marvelous summer weather of late our electrical needs are reduced?

I reckon it's a ploy by the powers that be to get as many coal trains down the Portishead branch (and up Filton Bank) as possible, on the grounds that when the Portishead branch is reopened to passengers they'll be able to screw joe public (via the guvmint) for millions of quid in grants, because after all, just look at how busy that line currently is.

It really was dead down there. There was a VGA van over in the distance (been there for ages) resident 08405 and an odd coal hopper and that was it.

08405?? It's usually 09003! (he says, legging it out the door with camera!)

Here you go...about as best as I could get through all the obstructions...

Looking a bit sorry for itself to be honest.

I believe :

international coal prices are high at the moment;

electricity demand is low - long evenings and too cold for air con

power stations have large stocks of coal.

net impact low coal imports at the moment - or relatively low to be precise and hence fewer coal trains running.

I wondered that, the stock piles adjacent were certainly being worked hard though when I visited the other night.

Long nights = better opertunities to go see these things though!:D

The large stock piles behind you were in the bennets coal area hasnt been a train load of coal out of bennets sidings this year. May be lucky and get a stone train every now and then .As for west wharf for get that rumors are that that contract has been lost as well .
There has just been a 2 week shut down of the silos as well as didcot and aberthaw power stations there was a few coal trains to aberthaw last week but nothing heavy .This week we have zero trains again out of avonmouth and rumors are going around that we have lost aberthaw work as well as ironbridge work as well now .
If green and yellow are your thing then freightliner heavy haul are working in and out of portbury now

I popped down to Avonmouth last Saturday and only saw a few rakes of HTAs and the shunter.

The Portbury news is very intresting.
Are there any provisional timings for these FLHH as I only see EWS coal trains.

Just for the record:
66167 arr 13:35 29/01/07
66173 dep 13:40 26/02/07
66019 arr 13:40 23/03/07
66157 dep 13:40 11/04/07
66004 arr 22:05 25/06/07
66077 arr 22:10 03/07/07
66179 Stabled 13:40 09/07/07

Plus loads of others but it was either to dark or had already entered the docks too see nos.

While riding home from work this evening (Friday) I thought that I could here a 66. And low and behold as I made it to the cycle track I could see a Freightliner 66 heading light engine back towards Bristol.
This was about 22:20.
And while chatting to some bloke walking his dog on the cycle path he said that FLHH ran a train with headboard ' Bristol Herons on Tour' or something similar the other day.

Just found this pic of 66564
http://railphotos.demeseo.com/p43054090.html