The Bristol Railway Archive

Any ideas as to location Archivers? Waiting for train at a level crossing. Anybody recognize the Company gate or lamp design?

Someone has suggested Somerset. Quite possibly on a day trip from Bristol?

Another suggestion is France or Belgium during WW1, but it would be a long trip on the old Somerset registered bike!

Is it street, the large building in the background looks alittle like the old Clarks building, but not sur the railway was that close?

I think it's fishponds by the little tower on the roof

I think it's fishponds by the little tower on the roof

That's an interesting thought. It does look more Midland than GWRish.

Whereabouts in Fishponds were you thinking? What was the building with the tower?

The photo was found in a box of old pics in Bristol ...

jules wrote:

I think it's fishponds by the little tower on the roof

That's an interesting thought. It does look more Midland than GWRish.

Whereabouts in Fishponds were you thinking? What was the building with the tower?

The photo was found in a box of old pics in Bristol ...

But there weren't any level crossings anywhere near Fishponds. In fact, level crossing on the ex-Midland lines are few and far between in this neck of the woods:

Certainly not Warmley
Certainly not Barton Street Gloucester

What about Avonside Wharf or perhaps the Gloucester Docks lines? Alternatively, somewhere S&D related on the Somerset levels?

To me the the building in the background has the look of a hospital or asylum. I wonder if it could be a military hospital for the war-wounded. The woman second from the left in the black gown could perhaps be a nurse.

I must say I can't reconcile it with any location I can think of in Somerset.

To me the the building in the background has the look of a hospital or asylum.

I agree it does look like a hospital or some other kind of institution. The buildings remind me slightly of Muller's Orphanage buildings up on Ashley Down.

What about Avonside Wharf

Nope definitely not Avonside. There was a level crossing there, but no open space at all anywhere near there like in the photo.

When this thread started I was determined to leave it alone (as IÆve got a mental block when it comes to things like crosswords, I usually find the same with ôfind the locationö photographs!

However, now IÆve spent around 5 hours mulling it over

The only thing we really have to go on is the Somerset-registered motorcycle and that, of course, could in truth be anywhere in the country, if not in one of the non-bombed bits of another country during WW1!

However, there are a few other things which are clues. The architecture is probably English. As someone has already said, the main building in the background appears to be some sort of institution eg a hospital, asylum or a school. The amount of development suggests that this was taken in a village or small town. To the left of the bloke in the beret there appears to be a building that could be a church, a church gate awning or a school.

There are a number of open windows and, whilst the Edwardians preferred to be over-dressed compared to what is commonplace today, the fact that everybody is buttoned up to the neck suggests that it was cool or cold at the time. If that is indeed the case, the length of the shadows suggests that it was taken in the morning and, if so, that would suggest the photographer is aiming north.

It is difficult to tell for certain, but the dimensions suggest to me single track. Leaving those six people posing in the photograph to one side for a moment, there are at least another five in the photo appearing to want to cross, which again suggests a reasonably-sized location if that number of people can congregate whilst the gates are down

Putting all that together, we might be looking for a single track line passing through a reasonably sized place, with a level crossing , on a north west to south east trajectory, with a building of sufficient importance on its northern side to probably warrant a mention on an Ordnance Survey map.

No, I still havenÆt got a solution but might that narrow the search down a bit?!

One peculiarity, unless I am misreading the scene, is that there appears to be only one level crossing gate. Or alternatively the road crosses the railway at such an extremely oblique angle that the gate on the opposite side of the line is beyond the left hand edge of the photo.

And is the gate not unexpectedly long if the railway is only single track?

AndyK wrote:One peculiarity, unless I am misreading the scene, is that there appears to be only one level crossing gate. Or alternatively the road crosses the railway at such an extremely oblique angle that the gate on the opposite side of the line is beyond the left hand edge of the photo.

And is the gate not unexpectedly long if the railway is only single track?

Now that was something I was wondering about. If you have a wide road crossing a single track railway, you need a wide gate - how much space the tracks take up is irrelevent to the width of the road.

So those (possibly) cables coming down from the retaining pillars to the gates. Could this indicate that the gates actually rose up?

If you look closeley, there is a similar arrangement a bit further away, suggesting that these cables were attached to the gates on both sides.

However, now IÆve spent around 5 hours mulling it over

I'm sorry! I should never have posted it!

I agree it is a very long gate, so the line is at a very oblique angle to the road. I don't think it would have lifted up though - they didn't have that kind of technology - the wires (or ropes) are actually more likely solid iron support bars.

Now, one more thing we can establish is that the gate would open away from us, across the track. That explains why the women to the left of the photo are crowding towards that end of the gate - so they can cross as soon as it opens. It certainly wouldn't open towards us, as if it did, they wouldn't be standing where they are and it is so long it would seem not able to clear the wooden posts in the foreground of the picture.

So when positioned across the railway, rather than the road, the major length of the gate would be parallel to the road - only the first bit of it, nearest the post, would actually be across the track. It would take a small arc of movement to position this gate across the railway, because of the angle.

However, if the same arrangement were applied on the other side of the track, with the same length gate, it would have a very large arc of movement to move from alongside the road to across the track. You'd also have to close the nearest gate to us first, otherwise it would foul the gate on the other side of the road. The second gate would have had to have been on the opposite side of the road too, as otherwise you would never be able to move the nearest gate to open.

All this seems a very strange installation, but my proposition is that owing to the extreme length of the gate we can see, there was no gate on the other side. The purpose is to prevent people and traffic from crossing the railway and one gate would achieve this almost as effectively as two. Wouldn't keep people of the track, but it would prevent them continuing their journey until the train had passed.

Here's another suggestion: in the same box of old pictures were some of a furniture factory in Yatton. Maybe this mystery pic is near there? Possibly the Clevedon branch or even light rail WC&PR line from Weston to Clevedon / Portishead? That might explain the rather odd installation ... just a thought!

I wish I'd never found the damned picture now!

Looking again, I think the gate probably opens only to the post by the wicket gate on the opposite side of the track you can see through the wire mesh on the gate (immediately right of the 2nd left woman in the gown).

Those waiting to cross all seem to be looking to the left, so given the shadows and Mr Summerhill's geographic deductions, it was probably an "up" train

jules wrote: I wish I'd never found the damned picture now!

So do I

Having now looked along the course of the WCP (I had discounted that yesterday for some daft reason) on Google Earth I cannot see any location that would come close to matching the one in the photograph. We are looking at a reasonably sized place, so that would exclude all except the towns in the railway's name, and Clevedon and Portishead can also be discounted because, if it was a north-facing shot, there would be hills in the background.

I can also find nowhere on the Somerset levels that seems to fit the bill, and have looked as far afield as Wool, Wareham and Weymouth and still no joy. Yesterday we appeared to have discounted anywhere on the Midland south of Gloucester.

Options are diminishing!! About the only lines left in Somerset to consider are Taunton to Yeovil and the Minehead branch - I've already discounted Taunton to Barnstaple because of the topography.

The most irritiating thing about the whole thing is that if the soddin' photographer had waited until the train turned up, half the members around here could probably identify the engine and a probable location on seeing the front 6 inches of the smokebox!!

Not a clue!

But I'll add three comments

a) I was under the impression that the boundary fences on the Midland railway network tended to have the palings nailed on at an angle.

b) At the extreme right I can see what looks like the metal supports of a buffer stop, indicating a siding of some sort.

c) at the exteme left, the trees and buildings seem to indicate that the ground drops away, fairly gradually.