Mangotsfield railway station
Encyclopedia
Midland Railway
The Midland Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844 to 1922, when it became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway....
Bristol and Gloucester
Bristol and Gloucester Railway
The Bristol and Gloucester Railway opened in 1844 between Bristol and Gloucester, meeting the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway. It is now part of the main line from the North-East of England through Derby and Birmingham to the South-West.-History:...
main line and was situated about five miles to the north east of Bristol in what is now the suburb of Mangotsfield
Mangotsfield
Mangotsfield is a village in South Gloucestershire, England, situated north of the Bristol suburb of Kingswood, bounded to the north by the M4 motorway and to the east by the Emersons Green housing estate....
.
The station was the junction for the Mangotsfield and Bath Branch Line
Mangotsfield and Bath Branch Line
The Mangotsfield and Bath Branch Line opened in 1869 to connect Bath to the Midland Railway network at Mangotsfield, on the former Bristol and Gloucester Railway....
that led to Bath Green Park railway station
Bath Green Park railway station
Green Park railway station is a former railway station in Bath, Somerset, England. For some of its life, it was known as Bath Queen Square.-Architecture and opening:...
and on southwards over the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway
Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway
The Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway – almost always referred to as "the S&D" – was an English railway line connecting Bath in north east Somerset and Bournemouth now in south east Dorset but then in Hampshire...
to Bournemouth. It had six platforms, including a bay platform used by the passenger service to Clifton Down
Clifton Down railway station
Clifton Down railway station is located on Whiteladies Road in Clifton, Bristol, England. The station is west of Bristol Temple Meads on the Severn Beach Line...
using the Clifton Extension Railway
Clifton Extension Railway
The Clifton Extension Railway was a joint railway in Bristol, owned by the Great Western Railway and the Midland Railway companies.-Description of line:...
. The latter services were discontinued in 1940 following the outbreak of war and were never reinstated. Part of the line to Bath now forms the Avon Valley Railway
Avon Valley Railway
The Avon Valley Railway is a three-mile-long heritage railway based at Bitton station in South Gloucestershire, England, not far from Bristol and is run by a local group: The Avon Valley Railway Company Ltd. The railway follows the Avon Valley south-east from Oldland Common, through Bitton and...
, which has its headquarters at Bitton
Bitton
Bitton is a village and civil parish in South Gloucestershire, England, in the Greater Bristol area on the River Boyd.It is in the far south of the South Gloucestershire district, near the border with Bath and North East Somerset...
.
The line to Bath was strengthened in the 1930s so as to take heavier locomotives and the station was very busy until the 1960s, when the Beeching Report recommended closure. The station closed in 1966 when services between Bristol and Bath on the line were withdrawn; stopping services between Bristol and Gloucester on the Midland line had been withdrawn in 1965 and the last regular through passenger train to use the third side of the triangle, which connected Bath and Gloucester but bypassed the station itself and did not have platforms, had ended in 1962 with the re-routing of the Pines Express
Pines Express
The Pines Express was a named passenger train that ran daily between Manchester and Bournemouth in England between 1910 and 1967.It ran for the first time under the name "Pines Express" on 26 September 1927; and is believed to have been named after the pine trees growing in the Chines in the...
away from the Midland and Somerset & Dorset lines, though some freight used it later.
Carson's chocolate factory occupied the centre of the triangle (along with its own cricket pitch) and had its own siding which saw chocolate trains until the early 1960s. The station also handled a lot of racing pigeon traffic, the birds being loaded into special vans. The mail train, which in the days of the Travelling Post Office
Travelling Post Office
A Travelling Post Office was a type of mail train in the UK where the post was sorted en-route. The last Travelling Post Office services were ended on 9 January 2004, with the carriages used now sold for scrap or to preservation societies....
always had to have the mail catcher on the left, was turned every day on the triangle until the mid-1960s.
The station was the inspiration behind Arnold Ridley
Arnold Ridley
Major William Arnold Ridley, OBE was an English playwright and actor, first notable as the author of the play The Ghost Train and later in life for portraying the elderly Private Charles Godfrey in the popular British sitcom Dad's Army .-Early life:Ridley was born in Walcot, Bath, England where...
's play The Ghost Train after Ridley found himself stranded there one evening. The sound of a train on the curve bypassing the station (used by non-stopping trains between Bath and Gloucester) gave the impression of a train approaching, passing and departing but not being seen.
The station is now on the route of the Bristol & Bath Railway Path, part of National Cycle Route 4.