The Bristol Railway Archive

Has anyone seen the new anti line crossing gates at the Bath end of Keynsham platform. They are anodised locked gates with spikey posts etc in the form of a stile, they are about 2/3rds of platform width and the remainder is made up of obstacles that resemble an anechoic chamber wall to make you think twice about crossing line.
They are by the slope on both platforms, I dont know but presume this is in response to incidents.

There's been trouble with commuters leaving their cars and simply crossing the tracks instead of using the footbridge. I would have thought putting a fence between car park and platform would have been a better idea though.

How lazy can you get?

No pictures have surfaced yet, but the description of the arrangement suggests significantly reduced visibility along the platform for the drivers of Bristol-bound trains, plus those passengers waiting on the platform. Health and safety own-goal?

As Hattie quite rightly points out, there is nothing to stop someone who feels so inclined leaping over car park fence and crossing line, and/or negotiating barrier by holding onto railings for support.

I will attempt to post a picci when I work out how.

From my observations it doesn't look like visibility or signal sighting will be affected (and no doubt this would have been checked very thoroughly given the paranoia over signal sighting ever since Ladbroke Grove). The fencing actually stops a few feet from the platform edge, and there are arris rails (or a souped up version of them anyway - think a weapons-grade cattle grid and you won't go too far wrong) filling in the gap right up to the platform edge.

Elaborate and well-built as this arrangement is, it doesn't look like it would be too hard to get round it! I may be travelling to/from Keynsham on Sunday, if so will try and get a couple of pics if no-one has posted by then.

And putting a fence between the car park and the platform would be a bad idea. Sometimes I've only caught my train because I could hop over the wall

I took a couple of pics of the barriers on Keynsham platform, can someone tell me in simple terms how to post them. can I dag and drop into a posting? thanks.

The same gates and "obstructions" were installed at Nailsea & Backwell yesterday, I noticed them on my way to work this morning.

nickt wrote:I took a couple of pics of the barriers on Keynsham platform, can someone tell me in simple terms how to post them. can I dag and drop into a posting? thanks.

Unfortunately you can't drag and drop into a posting. There are several ways you can use though. If you've got 'webspace' available, upload the image to that then provide a link to the url address in a post on here, or you can also display the image in the post by using the tags around the url address.
Alternatively you can use an on-line gallery, something like fotopic or photobucket.
Failing that you can always e-mail them to pete (madhattie) and he'll post them on here for you and possibly put them on the new website!!

Wot he said!

Send them to me and I'll get them up. I'm being made redundant this weekend and am spending a lot of time job hunting (and trying to sell photos through stock agencies!) so sorry for not replying myself earlier.

Thanks to Nick the photos of the barriers can now be found here:

http://bristol-rail.co.uk/wiki/index.ph ... nsham#2008

Cheers Nick

A lick of white paint and they'd look "railway". In this raw state they just look menacing.

The platforms at Keynsham station look quite long, but are they long enough to accomodate an HST?

There is alot of wasted space on the platforms too, like the grassy bits on the opposite side to the shelter, I think I saw some pics of Keynsham station somewhere that showed there were station buildings there with a canopy? It looks like the station could do with alot of improvements.

The platforms will take an HST, but for some years now the only sections of each platform in use are on the east side of the road bridge. There are signs alerting passengers that they should not pass a point under the road bridge. One morning service from Paddington stops at Keynsham and whilst I have not been down to view it, I suspect that only a limited number of doors would be opened.

I wonder why they chose Keynsham? Is there a bigger problem than usual with passengers/kids running across the line there?

Sure those big rubbery bits would deter your average commuter, but it looks like the determined could negotiate them quite easily. Kids unfortunately might see the obstacle and treat it as a challenge ....

Unless the deterrent is that the rubbery bits are likely to make anybody trying to walk over them look absolutely stupid