The Bristol Railway Archive

Taken from bbc news website :
Firefighters have been tackling a blaze at the Avon Valley Railway attraction at Bitton in Bristol.
A derelict train carriage stored in the sidings was set alight in the early hours of Saturday.

Avon Fire and Rescue Service said it had not ruled out arson as the cause of the fire.

A spokesman for the attraction said the 1935-built carriage was being stored in readiness for restoration, but that it had been completely destroyed.

"It was quite an old carriage, it was a former London, Midland and Scottish corridor composite coach," said development coordinator David Cole.

"It was owned by a member here and was due to be restored, but it's a write-off.

"All that's left is the chassis and metal ends, everything between is no longer there."

The attraction itself is still operating normally, he added.
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I know dam well what I would do with the offenders a ducking stool and the river avon comes to mind except they would go in and stay in the water .

If a criminal was caught the punishment should be a public belting down at ashton gate for pre match entertainment

What remains of the coach as seen last night.

Well this was inevitable really: Kids have been trying to set fire to this coach for years. 34058's owner, who spends 4 nights a week in the AVR's sleeper coach, has told me about countless times that he's had to tell these ****s to **** off.

To be honest, it would never have been restored at the AVR. The line relies on its MK1 fleet for services, and this coach was a historical oddball, totally "non-standard" compared to the rest of the fleet. It's a crying shame, but when you look at it, this coach has been totally unprotected, out of sight up the headshunt with open and missing doors and windows...a simple tarpaulin would have prevented both the ingress of years of rainfall and molotov cocktails, but that's all academic now, and something for the owner to think about. At least there's a bit more siding space now, and overnighters will have a bit more peace...maybe.

It's going to be strange to not see the coach there anymore. Has been quite a fixture of the place!

James wrote:Well this was inevitable really: Kids have been trying to set fire to this coach for years. 34058's owner, who spends 4 nights a week in the AVR's sleeper coach, has told me about countless times that he's had to tell these ****s to **** off.

To be honest, it would never have been restored at the AVR. The line relies on its MK1 fleet for services, and this coach was a historical oddball, totally "non-standard" compared to the rest of the fleet. It's a crying shame, but when you look at it, this coach has been totally unprotected, out of sight up the headshunt with open and missing doors and windows...a simple tarpaulin would have prevented both the ingress of years of rainfall and molotov cocktails, but that's all academic now, and something for the owner to think about. At least there's a bit more siding space now, and overnighters will have a bit more peace...maybe.

Sad to see.
I would imagine some of the culprits are the children of the kids who used to vandalise the site when I used to work there many moons ago.

A real shame, but as James says perhaps not surprising. I remember it being in use as the staff mess and signing-on point in 1996 when I first started at the AVR. The joke even back then was that it was only held together by the collective efforts of the woodworm holding hands. It was replaced with the current vehicle a few years later (none too soon!). This is the maroon mk1 with the yellow warning panel and the end windscreens you can see up the far end of the car park, which was built as an escort vehicle for use in nuclear flask trains but ultimately never went into traffic.

It has actually been privately owned for some years now as there was a collective realization that it could never be restored it in a reasonable time scale with the amount of work that needs to be done elsewhere to keep the railway in operation: internally it bore little resemblance to a BCK and was more-or-less open plan. Unfortunately the owner had not been able to start on restoration so the vehicle had deteriorated to its current (until Saturday) state. I did have a faint hope that we might one day see it in traffic on the AVR or elsewhere but sadly no longer!