The Bristol Railway Archive

According to the bbc site wednesday night the beach line will be closed by network rail due to the " weather conditions"
Railways prepare for snow impact
Widespread snowfalls expected over the Bristol area during the early hours of Thursday are likely to close the Severn Beach Line railway service.

Network Rail has advised First Great Western that the weather conditions will not be suitable for the service to Bristol Temple Meads.

BBC weatherman Richard Angwin said: "Snow is expected to fall in the Greater Bristol area after 2200 GMT."

He added there was likely to be significant disruption to transport.

Commuters using the Severn Beach Line are being advised that a replacement bus service will be organised depending on conditions.

First Great Western hopes that all other trains will run to schedule.

Good grief can any one tell where the network management worked before going on to the railway The severn beach line continued to work all the time snow fell from 1963 onwards they must have worked in a non do any thing job with management like that there is no hope for a proper railway

Just seems to be any excuse these days to shut a line to traffic. Wonder if network rail suspended the coal trains as well today out of avonmouth ?
There is a pair of snow ploughs based at Barton Hill but I suspect they were "snowed in".

The excuse will probably be that the platforms were unsafe for the public to use. After all, we all seem to have to be wrapped in cotton wool nowadays ....

It also saves FGW some crews if a few people haven't got into work and they'll probably find the spare units useful elsewhere too.

But that's hardly a good enough reason to cancel the whole service for the whole day. It gives *totally* the wrong message to the increasing number of new passengers who are returning to the SB line.

One of the main advantages of rail is that it can still run safely when road transport can't.

This arbitrary withdrawal is pathetic and there should be an enquiry. How many people couldn't get where they were supposed to be today?

I for one will be writing to FGW / Bristol City Council and asking for a full explanation.

Great they are going to lay on buses,......................pity there are no buses running today either

Have the Barton Hill snow ploughs been in use? If so are there any pics?

buses started to run in shirehamton around mid day but no trains

mow wrote:Have the Barton Hill snow ploughs been in use? If so are there any pics?

They have only been out on a test run and that was in the dead of night about 2am.The usual problem that would occur with running them is with most other db services finding a loco thats spare.As it run by the network arm of db the only engine in the area would be the car train and that only runs tuesday and thursday now.

jules wrote:The excuse will probably be that the platforms were unsafe for the public to use. After all, we all seem to have to be wrapped in cotton wool nowadays ....

It also saves FGW some crews if a few people haven't got into work and they'll probably find the spare units useful elsewhere too.

But that's hardly a good enough reason to cancel the whole service for the whole day. It gives *totally* the wrong message to the increasing number of new passengers who are returning to the SB line.

One of the main advantages of rail is that it can still run safely when road transport can't.

This arbitrary withdrawal is pathetic and there should be an enquiry. How many people couldn't get where they were supposed to be today?

I for one will be writing to FGW / Bristol City Council and asking for a full explanation.

Prehaps you would be better off writing to Network Rail??

From what I saw watching trains from Narroways Hill this week I suspect it's got more to do with service reliability on the rest of the FGW network. First thing in the morning after it had snowed and while it was snowing heavily, a lot of the trains going up and down the Temple Meads to Parkway line were going fairly slowly (30-40 Mph max) - I'm guessing that they canned the Severn Beach line trains because having them crossing the junction at the usual 10-15 mph would have made it hard to keep the rest running smoothly.

They were running on Tuesday morning but every time a train came off the Severn Beach line, something got checked at the signal just north of Narroways Junction (can't see the signal to the south so don't know if the same happened there).