The Bristol Railway Archive

Work has started on transforming the area around Avon Street from ex-railway use into housing and offices. This is a link to the report in the local paper:

http://tinyurl.com/56grq

although the article actually in the paper is much more comprehensive!

Sad to see so much history disappear but it's good to see redevelopment of derelict land rather than demolition of important old buildings or new builds on green field sites.

I love wandering around abandoned industrial landscapes, whether it be old railways or docklands...there's always such an incredible atmosphere...a sense of time, a busy, thriving past hidden beneath the undergrowth that is still close enough to sense, you can see it clearly from behind closed eyelids...and there's also a feeling of expectance...waiting...as if the land is dreaming of a time when the rails return and it will awaken again to the noise and bustle of industry

I wonder where that crossing gate has gone...it would make a nice garden fence

James wrote:I love wandering around abandoned industrial landscapes, whether it be old railways or docklands...there's always such an incredible atmosphere...a sense of time, a busy, thriving past hidden beneath the undergrowth that is still close enough to sense, you can see it clearly from behind closed eyelids...and there's also a feeling of expectance...waiting...as if the land is dreaming of a time when the rails return and it will awaken again to the noise and bustle of industry

Hmmm... nice words and I know -exactly- what you mean. When I were a nipper (oh gawd, he's off again..) my friends and myself used to walk over to the remains of St Phillips station and Barrow Road and we'd spend hours walking around what was really nothing more than piles of rubble and muddy trenches immersed in what we -thought- we could see, rather than what it really was. We'd occasionally pull an old telegraph insulator, or sleeper bolt out of the undergrowth (always marked with the railway company's initials), and to us it was like discovering lost treasure.

James wrote:I wonder where that crossing gate has gone...it would make a nice garden fence

I'd love to know! I can just imagine it being splintered into a thousand pieces by a JCB when they could have given it to me and I'd have used it in my back garden...

madhattie wrote:
I'd love to know! I can just imagine it being splintered into a thousand pieces by a JCB when they could have given it to me and I'd have used it in my back garden...

Quick...get down there, you might be able to save it!