The Bristol Railway Archive

does any body have a gradient profile for the thornbury branch they can send me i have one in colin Maggs book but i could do with one a little more accurate, its for a railworks route i am writing but i keep getting problems with tytherington tunnel ie finding daylight out the roof!

Tony, there is a gradient profile in the book, An Historical Survey Of The Midland In Gloucestershire by Peter Smith. It's right at the start of the section on the branchline. I'm not sure how it compares to the others or how to get a copy to you, the PM feature seems not to be working. Maybe I have something turned off or disabled (probably my brain!).

Mark.

thanks blackthorn heres my email a.perks662 [aaaaaaat] btinternet {dott} com
now for piles of locomotive spam etc:)

Edit by James: E-mail address broken up to avoid above!

Thanks james all recieved from blackthorn.

Does anyone know why the railway was built in the first place. Were the buildrs hoping to connect up with the Severn Tunnel line?

I think it was built to serve the quarries at Tytherington, and also the town of Thornbury. As for a timeline as to how it all came about, I'd have to look it up.

I may be way off the mark here, hopefully someone more knowledgeable can shed some light.

The line was built to serve Thornbury, as the closest stations were Wickwar and Yate 5 m,iles distant, during construction, the line was branched to Framptom coteral for the Chillingworth Iron ore mines these were however abandonded shortly after construction due to flooding of the works, and the branch/branch closed the line had like most, big aspirations and was constructed to double track width on embankements cuttings and bridges, strangely the tunnels were only built single tracked, the line is still officially open but rarely used i dont think it has seen a train of any sort this year yet, the line is now terminated at the A38/ tytherington junction and grovesend tunnel blocked and indeed in private ownership, the line is also about 3 metres higher here than originaly built so the ruling gradient of 1 in 61 down to thorbury, was eased to help loaded stone trains using the head shunt to move the trains.

The busiest the line had probably been was during the construction of the First Severn bridge and the Oldbury Power stations where Cement products and steel were brought in by rail then taken the last short didtance to works sites, and indeed has been reported that the line was still busy and had work when closed in sept '67, however the line was still used until October of that year due to a new Stone contract- was then lifted during '69, and ironiocally re-layed during '72 hardly worth lifting it really was it.

tonyperks wrote: was then lifted during '69, and ironiocally re-layed during '72 hardly worth lifting it really was it.

Had they known in 1969 there was a major contract with Tytherington Quarry coming, they wouldn't have lifted it