The Bristol Railway Archive

The landslip that closed the Bristol to Mangotsfield line, was the location of this immediately after the Thicket Road bridge ? Are the any pictures of it ? The cycle path turns to the right immediately after the bridge and wondered if this was as a result of the slip, or is just coincidence ?

Could i also ask if the Bridge at Ridgeway road only every had two lines through the main span, were there any lines that ran through the spans on either side ? many thanks

i guess i can ask . . . . . ??

nige2222 wrote:i guess i can ask . . . . . ??

That's perfectly true - you can!!

You will often find around here that if people don't know the answer they tend not to post and say they don't know, they just don't post!

Really and truly I ought to know. Although I had moved from Staple Hill in 1964 I was still well-acquainted with the place so I ought to know or at least be able to remember. There are a number of other posters around here who also live in the area now or used to live in the area, but clearly as they haven't posted the chances are that they don't know either.

Thinking back about it, the landslip may not have got much press coverage at the time. The line was scheduled for closure a few days later anyway, and the slip merely hastened its demise by a short time. The press couldn't have used the headline "Landslip brings chaos to Railway" or whatever because everything started running via Stoke Gifford and that was that. It was probably considered about as newsworthy as "Sun Rises in Morning" by the editor of the Evening Post.

As regards the supplementary question, there were sidings at Fishponds on both sides of the station (in case you don't know, that "sculpture" of bricks pretending to be a fish is on the site of the station) but as far as I am aware they never extended beyond the immediate station precinct. The line at Ridgeway Road, of course, is on the gradient falling towards Bristol (1 in 69 to 80) so it would be unlikely that any sidings were ever laid down it for fear of runaways. There were certainly only two running lines on the bank. Having said that, the Old Maps website http://www.old-maps.co.uk/maps.html shows detail down to individual lines on the 1:2500 scale maps, so if you want to do some detailed research it might be worth looking there.

Thats the best I can do I'm afraid - a couple of hundred words that could be summarised as "I don't know either"

But at least I replied

I don't know, but I know a guy that may.
On the photographic site Flicker is a guy that goes by the name of Fray Bentos, he is a fellow Staple Hill Secondary school boy. I am sure that somewhere in his photographic archive, the Bentos archive as he calls it he has mentioned this. He knows this section of line intimately as he walked it many times immediately after its closure.

Robin Summerhill wrote:

nige2222 wrote:i guess i can ask . . . . . ??

That's perfectly true - you can!!

You will often find around here that if people don't know the answer they tend not to post and say they don't know, they just don't post!

I don't know either - it was 2 years before I moved to Bristol

Just to muddy the water a bit further, a number of sources, including one previously posted by Robin a few years back, put the slip between Fishponds and Staple Hill, whereas others put the slip between Kingswood Junction and Fishponds!!

http://www.bristol-rail.co.uk/forum/vie ... php?t=1704

http://www.kingswoodpeople.co.uk/Reinst ... story.html

BristleGWR wrote:Just to muddy the water a bit further, a number of sources, including one previously posted by Robin a few years back, put the slip between Fishponds and Staple Hill, whereas others put the slip between Kingswood Junction and Fishponds!!

http://www.bristol-rail.co.uk/forum/vie ... php?t=1704

http://www.kingswoodpeople.co.uk/Reinst ... story.html

An interesting case of an old thread being resurrected to bite you on the bum

As far as I am aware, from what I remember at the time, the slip was between Fishponds and Staple Hill. The OP wanted to know exactly where it was, but that I couldn't answer.

I am not entirely sure that the comments of "Colin Radford, 73" should be taken without a cellar full of salt. For example, if you intend to close a line on a given day, and already know what the diversionary route will be, and you are already planning for it, and then a bit of cutting decides to prove Newton's laws of gravity for you on a section of it a few days before the scheduled closure, who would bother to spend the money to clear it?

To imply, as he does, that there was some sort of conspiracy theory at work looks good to conspiarcy theorists, but doesn't really hold water from an accountancy point of view. Why "waste" money on clearing a line that will be closed in a few days anyway?

Likewise his comments on the North Somerset line. The facts were:

1. It was carrying a maximum of three trains per day
2. The Somerset coalfied was on its last legs and wouldn't be there much longer
3. It would probably be cheaper for the railway to possibly take a loss on the coal traffic, or at least lose some of their profit on it because of the longer route via Frome, than it would to have returned the line to service for what was known to be a limited life span.

Furthermore, landslips are not like snow - send a snowplough to clear it? The snowplough will put right any track buckling and other defects, will it? In fact, why have a permanant way section at all? Just send a snowplough, that'll fix it

Do you think "Colin Radford, 73" is related to that idiot that (I think) Jules quoted on another thread a few months ago who purported to be trained in railway electrification and pontificated that you could stand on a 750DC third rail with no ill-effects? I think he might be ...

I think I'll stick to my version. The slip was beteeen Fishponds and Staple Hill. But I don't know exactly where between Fishponds and Staple Hill.