The Bristol Railway Archive

Wont Happen......Grovesend tunnel is in private owner ship and the trackbed there is about 10 feet above the original anyway.

Just my two pence worth

So re-open to Tytherington and re-name it Thornbury Parkway!

It's the "Great Way Round" to Temple Meads too ...

The Line never was a busy passenger line it was found from an early time that it was quicker and cheaper to get a bus or "carriage" to bristol, and it still will be.
Dont get me wrong I would love to see the line reopen (not just to passengers), but why go from thornbury to yate then a "s " route to bristol when you can get on a bus at Thornbury and go straight down the A38 to bristol?

So is the line Closed or just Mothballed...................Again. especially after all the recent work on the crossings!

I guess not everybody who lives in Thornbury would actually be travelling to Bristol though. There must be a fair few who may just want to go to Yate. There is quite likely a lot of toing and froing between the two places.

madhattie wrote:I guess not everybody who lives in Thornbury would actually be travelling to Bristol though. There must be a fair few who may just want to go to Yate. There is quite likely a lot of toing and froing between the two places.

Yes very true Hattie, but then you'd still have to get the bus to the centre, so why not just catch one from thornbury to yate?, though i think it may be a round the lanes to and via every where!

A train from Thornbury to Yate would be far, far quicker than the same journey by car. As you say, a journey by car between the two takes you down many a country lane!

The current journey time between Yate and Temple Meads is 27 min. I reckon you'd be very hard pressed to do the same journey down the A38 in that time, especially during peak hours.

madhattie wrote:The current journey time between Yate and Temple Meads is 27 min. I reckon you'd be very hard pressed to do the same journey down the A38 in that time, especially during peak hours.

Just checked the bus time tables. The same journey by bus is an hour! Big win for the train

Did anybody notice in the article there was also a mention of the nuclear power station at Oldbury? Extending the line to there for construction traffic in and waste out ... when and if it gets built ...

Now that would be an interesting project I can hear the nimbys already ...

Sorry that IÆve not been my usual damp squib self when this topic comes up û I have pay as you go internet access down here in Cape Town and IÆve been trying to eke out what little IÆve got left

IÆll be back on Friday so I shall be more of a damp squib after that

I can only agree with everything that Tony says and add a little bit to it. I am afraid that there is a lot of looking at this matter through rose-tinted glasses going on here. First and foremost, we have to remember that even the LMS couldnÆt make the passenger service a revenue earner on this line and thatÆs why it closed in 1941.

Secondly, the line no longer exists west of Tytherington û that would have to be rebuilt at a not inconsiderable costs, and somebody would have to do the sums ie. ôWould the expected passenger revenue cover the operating costs of the line plus the capital outlay required to bring what is left up to passenger standards, and build what would to all intents and purposes be a new line into Thornbury, including of course the land purchase and building of a new station?ö

You would have to be confident of shifting one hell of a lot of passengers to make those figures stack up. I also think that the ôfreightö option of extending the line to Oldbury would not stack up either û you would once again have to potentially shift a lot of tonnage to make such a scheme plausible, and a lot more than you would get from simply taking building materials in and the odd bit of waste out.

Then you have to start to think of where these potential passengers want to go. Temple Meads? Any advance on nil as a starting point? Anybody in Thornbury who wants to use a main line service at all is going to head for Parkway, which is little more than 4 miles by road. I havenÆt got access to my WTTs to calculate mileages but IÆll hazard a guess that you wonÆt get much change out of 18 by rail. You could probably ride a push bike from Thornbury to Parkway faster than a train would get you there.

Whilst I suspect that there might be a few people who want to go from Thornbury to Yate, we would be talking literally thousands a day to even begin to make the figures stack up. If there was as little as 10% of that potential market the bus companies would already be running direct services. The fact that they are not, and the buses that they are running divert to serve every shepherdÆs cot en route, tells you how much potential traffic they think there is.

If all that were not enough about the Thornbury û Yate traffic, also bear in mind the inconvenient location of the station in terms of access to the shopping centre. Also bear in mind that the great British Public generally want to get out of their car/ bus/ train and fall into whichever shop theyÆre heading for, and the car and the bus are going to win that one hands down. ItÆs no good to simply look at station to station times û you need to look at door-to-door times for the passengers, and on that score the railway loses heavily.

In any case, why would many people want to go to Yate from Thornbury for shopping when there is an infinitely more comprehensive shopping mall closer and easier to get to, at Cribbs Causeway?

I would really like to be more positive about this matter but, as I see it, anybody who thinks that this is ever going to come to fruition is pipe dreaming in Cloud Cuckoo Land

I think you're right in that it's a pipe dream, but I'm not sure you're right about traffic figures. The line would be operated with a subsidy, as a service rather than for profit.

I also don't buy the argument about the station at Yate being too far away from the shopping centre for people to use it. Temple Meads is too far from -everything- but it's a very, very busy place.

A third case in point would be Severn Beach. There's -nothing- at Severn Beach whatsoever, but the number of passengers using the station is quite high. Who are they? Where do they go?! I have no idea, but nevertheless when the train is there, they use it in numbers.

And fourthly. As far as pipe dreams go. Well, we all thought Portishead was a pipedream, but I have no doubt whatsoever that that particular pipe dream will be up and running before we know it.

But yes, this one is unlikely to happen!

Grovesend tunnel is in private owner ship and the trackbed there is about 10 feet above the original anyway.

I've always thought this was a bit odd. Who buys a tunnel? And to what use did they put it?

I can only think of three things to do with an empty tunnel: fill it in with rubbish, use it as a shooting range, or as a pretty useless damp storage space. Or maybe start a mushroom farm?

A conundrum û do you start arguing points of detail with the owner of the forum, even when he agrees that its a pipe dream, or do you keep schtum?

As its chucking it down with rain here tonight, the first IÆve seen in five weeks, I think IÆll argue the points of detail

It is certainly possible to operate a railway line or a bus service come to that by means of a subsidy, but the people picking up the tab want to see a benefit to them of some kind. Whilst IÆve been away IÆve been writing the latest in my series of non-sellers about cycling, and I have been examining the reasons why so many ôlame duckö canal and railway schemes actually got built in the first place (this is tangential to the point on this thread but it is still relevant nonetheless)

Many of the people who invested in these schemes didnÆt really give a toss whether the railway or canal made any money û their interest was in getting their goods to market along it thereby increasing their profits. In much the same way as businesses these days need a fleet of trucks to take goods to their customers. But in those days you didnÆt only need to provide the trucks û you had to build your own ôroadö as well, because the state wouldnÆt do it for you.

The people doing the subsidising of the Thornbury branch passenger service would be the local councils û and whatÆs in it for them? Where is the social need that is not already catered for by the bus service? Where is the traffic congestion theyÆll relieve between Yate and Thornbury? (sitting at the lights at Iron Acton for 20 seconds doesnÆt count as congestion ). There isnÆt any congestion worth spending that amount of money to relieve. And subsidising a train service as a ôpublic serviceö that is there just in case the car breaks down or we get snowed in is not a sensible way to spend taxpayers money

Where do people in Thornbury want their public transport to go? I would suggest that the vast majority of them want to go to Bristol or to Cribbs Causeway. If they want to access the national rail network of main line services they want to go to Parkway. Only a very few by comparison would want to go to Yate.

As regards Temple Meads, of course it is a busy place, but not necessarily with shoppers. People loaded down with shopping do not want to lug that lot back to the railway station a mile away û they want to get on a means of transport outside the store and take it home. Have you ever wondered why the local passenger service in Bristol was decimated under Beeching, yet many of the Valley lines around Cardiff are still open and avoided that fate? Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that you can fall out of Queen Street station and straight into the major shopping area in Cardiff?

Whilst Portishead now looks like it might happen (and I of course will have a few words to eat if it does ... ) there is a clear case for something to be done û a lot of people want to go to Bristol, the congestion is appalling and the road network is inadequate for the number of vehicles using it. This does not apply between Thornbury and Yate.

Severn Beach û I take the point but only to a point. It is a dormitory town for Bristol these days and road connections to Bristol still leave a lot to be desired. They donÆt at the dormitory town of Thornbury û A38, M5. M4, M32 and you can be in Old Market Street within half an hour, even at peak times. And of course, Severn Beach might not be the indicator for what might happen at Thornbury û that signpost could be at Pilning ...