Bristol and Gloucester Railway

Early British railway company

The Bristol and Gloucester Railway was a railway company opened in 1844 to run services between Bristol and Gloucester. It was built on the , but it was acquired in 1845 by the Midland Railway, which also acquired the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway at the same time. Legal and practical difficulties meant that it was some time before through standard gauge trains could run on the line; that only became possible in 1854 with the conversion of most of the line to mixed gauge and the opening of the Tuffley Loop. Even then the station at Gloucester was awkwardly sited, until in 1896 a through station was opened; it later became known as Gloucester Eastgate station. The Tuffley Loop and Eastgate station were closed in 1975. Part of the original line near Bristol was closed in 1970, trains being diverted over the ex Great Western Railway route through Filton. However, the remainder of the route is in service currently as part of the busy Bristol to Birmingham main line.

In 1809 the Gloucester and Cheltenham Railway was authorised. In reality it was to be a horse operated plateway. Cheltenham was growing in importance because of the supposedly health giving properties of the waters, and houses for well to do residents were being built, requiring the bringing in of stone for the building work and for roads, and coal for the residents. There were good quality quarries already in existence at Leckhampton, high above the town, and Forest of Dean coal was available at Gloucester, nine miles away, brought there on the River Severn and later by canal. The Gloucester and Cheltenham Railway was built to serve these needs, by connecting the docks at Gloucester (under construction) and the Leckhampton quarries, with Cheltenham. The G&CR was completed in 1811. Although alternatively referred to as a railway, railroad, or tramway, it was in fact a horse operated plateway of gauge. A steam locomotive was later tried out, but the experiment was a failure because the locomotive was too heavy for the tramplates and broke them.

In June 1828 two companies were incorporated by Act of Parliament to build tramways to bring coal from collieries at Shortwood, Parkfield and Coalpit Heath, to the north east of Bristol, into Bristol itself. One of the companies was the Bristol and Gloucestershire Railway, which was to terminate in Bristol at Cuckold's Pill on the Floating Harbour. The second was the Avon and Gloucestershire Railway, whose terminal was on the River Avon opposite Keynsham, from where river boats would continue the journey. The two lines were to make a junction north of Mangotsfield, near the later Mangotsfield North Junction. The lines were made with cast iron fish bellied edge rails on stone blocks, and had a track gauge of ; they were single lines worked by horses. The Avon and Gloucestershire Railway was opened in July 1832 together with the part of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Railway north of the point of junction. The south western part of the Bristol line was opened on 6 August 1835.

In 1835 the Great Western Railway was incorporated, to build a trunk railway from London to Bristol. The engineer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the line was to be built on the broad gauge and it would use locomotive power. The line was opened progressively, but the portion in Bristol was opened on 31 August 1840, and the line opened throughout from London to Bristol on 30 June 1841.

Even before the Great Western Railway had been authorised, people in Cheltenham had determined to promote a line from Cheltenham through Gloucester and Stroud to join the planned Great Western Railway near Swindon; accordingly they submitted a Bill for the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway in the 1836 session of Parliament. It was passed on 21 June 1836.

The proposed alignment of these two proposed lines was almost identical between Gloucester and Cheltenham. Moreover, both companies proposed to acquire the Gloucester and Cheltenham Railway; this was not in order to use its main line route, but because of the access it had acquired to Gloucester Docks. In November 1837 the C&GWUR reported that the condition of the money market was such that they were going to be unable to build all of their line in the foreseeable future, and that they proposed to concentrate on the Swindon end. The Birmingham and Gloucester Railway were alarmed by this as they relied on the C&GWUR to build part of the shared Gloucester to Cheltenham line. The C&GWUR needed a Parliamentary Act and the Birmingham company secured clauses enabling them to build the relevant portion themselves if the C&GWUR did not proceed with the construction in a timely way. This motivated the C&GWUR to alter its priorities and it let contracts for construction and acquired land at Gloucester for the station. (It had been agreed that the two companies would have separate stations there and at Cheltenham.)

In 1872 the GWR converted all its broad gauge and mixed gauge track in the Gloucester area to standard gauge. As part of that work it removed the Avoiding Line and the spur to the T station ("long derelict") altogether.

The need to reverse in and out of the Gloucester station was a continuing difficulty, and on 12 April 1896 a new through station was opened, on the curve adjacent to the former station; this was a considerable step forward. It was later named Gloucester Eastgate station. The former Bristol and Gloucester and Birmingham and Gloucester stations were limited to goods operation.

In 1867 the Stonehouse and Nailsworth Railway was opened. Nailsworth was an important centre of local industry; the line ran from Stonehouse on the Bristol and Gloucester line. The building company was desperately short of money, and their line was purchased by the Midland Railway in 1868. A branch from that line to Stroud was originally authorised, but not built at first; the GWR Swindon line already served Stroud. In 1885 the Midland Railway Stroud branch from the Nailsworth line was opened. Passenger services ceased in 1947 and the goods service was discontinued in 1966.

The town of Dursley felt disadvantaged by being left off the railway network, and local interests promoted the Dursley and Midland Junction Railway, to make a short branch from Coaley on the Bristol and Gloucester line. It opened on 18 September 1856; the junction station was named Dursley Junction at first. This line too was in a difficult financial situation, and sold its concern to the Midland Railway in 1860. Passenger services were withdrawn in 1962. An engineering business at Dursley sustained the line for some years, but it closed completely in 1970. In 1879 the Severn Bridge Railway opened, joining Lydney to Sharpness and creating a through route across the River Severn. Although the promoters had hoped to create a new trunk route, the limited carrying capacity of the Severn Bridge frustrated plans to run heavy main line trains across it. The Great Western Railway opened a south curve to the Sharpness branch in 1908, in connection with the Badminton railway line, below. which shortened the route and relieved the section at Bath. There was a curve to Filton giving direct access to Bristol. The line was officially referred to as the South Wales and Bristol Direct Railway. The new line intersected the Bristol and Gloucester line at Westerleigh, and curves from the west and the east on the Badminton line were formed, joining the Bristol and Gloucester line at Yate by a grade separated junction. In its authorising Act the GWR obtained running powers to Sharpness, and a south curve was made at Berkeley Road (above) to give direct access. The GWR already had historic running powers from Bristol to Standish Junction. The GWR attempted to use the running powers to operate from Bristol through Filton and Westerleigh to join the Midland at Yate and continue to Standish, but the Midland challenged this on the basis that the new running powers were for traffic to Sharpness only, and the earlier running powers required them to run via Fishponds on the Midland Railway. For the time being the GWR was obliged to use the Fishponds line, attracting a greater toll charge for the running to the Midland. Many years later the GWR was able to use the loop for Gloucester trains, and they were extended to reach Birmingham through Stratford upon Avon. The east curve at Westerleigh, and the link into Sharpness, were little used.

Bath was an important destination, and the Midland Railway built a branch line to it from the Bristol and Gloucester line. It opened on 4 August 1869 from a triangular junction at Mangotsfield; a new junction station was opened at Mangotsfield on the same day. There had been an earlier Mangotsfield station, located at the North Junction, but the new station was greatly enlarged. When the Somerset and Dorset Railway opened its line to Bath on 20 July 1874, the Midland Railway's Bath branch was on a through route from the South Coast at Bournemouth, and traffic volumes expanded considerably. There was an extremely heavy traffic at summer weekends over the S&D Line, using the Midland branch to Bath.

On 1 October 1874 the Clifton Extension Railway opened, connecting the Bristol Port Railway and Pier back into Bristol itself, with a GWR connection to Narroways Hill Junction. The long tunnel under Clifton Down had been a formidable challenge. At the same time the Midland Railway made a connection from Kingswood Junction on the Bristol – Mangotsfield line, to Ashley Hill Junction, joining the GWR line from Narroways Hill Junction there. The Clifton Extension Railway itself was joint between the Midland and Great Western Railways from 1890.

After World War I the Government passed the Railways Act 1921 which compulsorily restructured the main line railways of Great Britain into one or other of four new large companies, the "groups". The process was referred to as "the grouping" and is considered to be effective from 1 January 1923. The Midland Railway was a constituent of the new London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), and the Great Western Railway, with others, was a constituent of the new enlarged Great Western Railway. Consequently, the LMS was now the controlling company for the former Bristol and Gloucester line, but the process imposed little other change on practices locally.

On 1 January 1948 the main line railways of Great Britain were taken into national ownership, under British Railways. At first the former companies were replicated, and the London Midland Region of British Railways operated the Bristol and Gloucester line, while the Western Region operated the former Great Western Railway lines in the area. In 1949 the last of the collieries on the old Bristol and Gloucestershire Railway branch to Coalpit Heath closed down and the branch too was closed. Since the Great Western Railway had enlarged Temple Meads station at Bristol, the necessity to use St Philip's station had gone, and it was closed on 21 September 1953. passenger trains on the Bristol to Gloucester route made calls there, giving the possibility of making connections with South Wales main line services. Yate station was reopened on 11 May 1989, and Cam & Dursley station was opened on 29 May 1994. Although the Midland Railway (MR) purchased these eleven locomotives from the contractors in July 1845, and absorbed the Bristol & Gloucester Railway (and the Birmingham & Gloucester Railway) on 3 August 1846, the locomotives were not given MR numbers until February 1847, when they became nos. 260–270. They were twice renumbered by adding 100 to their number in June 1852 and again in September 1853. Eight of the locomotives (B&GR nos. 1, 3 & 7 excepted) were sold by the MR to Thomas Brassey, who had secured the contract for working the North Devon Railway from 28 July 1855.