Current EDS completion estimate: 11/12/2078. That's 9 months added to the estimate following EDS 51, the "Wiltshire's Lost Railway - An Abandoned Branch Line." video. Current EDS total: 487.

Couple of additional facts: Hullavington station gives its name to the "route" when used by train crew - so it shows up as Hlvtn on train crew diagrams - trains which call at Bristol TM which go via this route tend to have 1Hxx headcodes. The other route via Bath and Chippenham is called Box, and the route north from Winterbourne Junction to Gloucester via Cam & Dursley and Yate is called the "Charfield" route. Similarly the line between Glos and 7TJ on the (mostly) Welsh side of the river is labelled "Awre". Chipping Sodbury cutting and tunnel were prone to major, route-closing flooding until works a few years ago - I remember a whole week where we had to crawl through at 5mph. The two tunnels surrounding Badminton are called Alderton Tunnel and Chipping Sodbury Tunnel, with the pleasing - and memorable - effect of that section of line having three features which go A B C. Should also be noted that for any projected local services to call at any of these locations should they choose to reopen the stations, the line would have to be widened to 4 tracks in a lot of places if not throughout, especially as the pre-COVID plan was to have up to 4 high speed trains per hour run through this route; not to mention its use as a useful diversion for both Box and the Golden Valley.

I find this fascinating, I used to live rather near Badminton, and went to university in Swansea, and would occasionally take the train. The ridiculous thing being I had to literally drive under that bridge at Hullavington on my way to the train station at Bristol Parkway, about thirty miles further towards wales! I always thought it was such a shame the station wasn’t there any more, I could have virtually walked there and got the train the whole way!

Good job Paul ... GWR were well revered in Wales, but could have been remembered as " Gods wonderful railway" or " God we got it wrong" !! LOL! 😁

This is has proved to be a very special video for me. I lived in Winterbourne from 1956 until 1982. Winterbourne station was where I spent many happy hours with my friends train spotting and witnessing many changes on the railway system. If I wasn't in Winterbourne, I would have been at Stoke Gifford marshalling yards (now the site of Bristol Parkway station). It was a fantastic time to be a railway enthusiast and the area beneath Winterbourne viaduct was one of my playgrounds. When I was very young (about 5 years old) my dad would take me to watch the trains on hot summer evenings in Winterbourne. When the station was till open, I remember seeing a very resplendent ‘Evening Star’ on an up express and the ‘City of Truro’ on a stopping train. We walked up to the cab side and we talked to the driver and fireman. This would've been sometime around 1959 - 1960… I can't be precise. I also can recall the lady station mistress. I believe that was pretty rare then and I have seen it referenced elsewhere on the Internet (unfortunately I can’t find it just now). One of the Winterbourne signalman let ‘me and my mate’ into the signal box on several occasions. Towards the end of the life of the former GWR signal box and the introduction of local MAS (Multiple Aspect Signalling) and automatic block systems, he gave us both a GWR signal lamp (spares from the cupboard as it were) I still have to this day. One weekend sometime after all of that, I guess sometime around the late 1960s early 1970s everything changed. The signal box was demolished and all the semaphore systems removed and more. We all felt pretty sad. Even as a ‘local’ I was not aware of the industrial legacy at Ram Hill (very interesting); however I can recall a situation that occurred when my father took me to Coalpit Heath station on one hot summer Saturday afternoon. It was very busy with holiday traffic going to and from South Wales. If my memory serves me correctly the station had just been closed, however everything was in good condition and all the original track-work still in-situ. This included two passing loops into the passenger platforms. The signalman had spotted my dad and I and we were invited into the signal box (stepping over the tracks). This obviously made my day as a young railway enthusiast of six or seven years of age. Little did I know what was to come. The temperatures that particular afternoon were unusually high and this created a number of problems due the expansion of the rails, cables, point rodding etc. The signalman had put a goods train into the up loop to allow the progress of a passenger train. Unfortunately after being let into the loop, the facing point and or associated mechanisms jammed and the point was stuck in position entering the loop. This meant that there was no through route on the up main line to allow the passage of the already delayed passenger train. This situation carried on for a couple of hours whilst my father and I stayed in the signal box. My dad was an engineer and always wanted to get ‘stuck-in’ and on this occasion be helpful to the signalman in anyway possible. I remember the signalman with my dad, pulling on various levers (together) trying to get them to lock in place, but it wasn't to be. There were frantic phone calls between the various signal boxes, which would've been Winterbourne down the line and beyond and further up the line towards Badminton.The chaos created as trains backed up all the way down the line towards South Wales for what I know was a number of hours must have been huge. The signalman was under great stress and I was requested nicely to sit in the corner of the signal box to keep out of the way (let’s face it, neither my me or my dad were really meant to be there). Eventually we had to leave with the situation unresolved as my mum would have been expecting us home for dinner and worrying. I guess there must be a record of this somewhere and would like to think that there is someone still alive who would have been part of this experience somewhere on that line on that afternoon (?). To this day I can recall the heat, smells and the images of these country signal boxes on a main line. Many thanks for the video which has taken me on a very happy and nostalgic trip.

Hi Paul, that viaduct at winterbourne and the remains of Ram Hill Colliery were quite something. A very interesting story. Thanks for taking us along. Good luck from Spain!!

There are stories that need to be told. Especially those about connectivity -- or maybe the lack thereof. And Paul does that wonderfully! (Or is it wanderfully? 🤔) 😃🌟

A small correction, maybe a little off topic for the Badminton line - the first railway crossing of the Severn in the Bristol area was the bridge between Sharpness and Lydney, a little ways up river of the tunnel. Opened in 1879, so 7 years before the tunnel, but was quickly overshadowed by it as a more direct connection, as it didn't bypass Bristol\Bath and in fact used some of the Birmingham main line. It closed in 1960 after being heavily damaged\partially collapsed by two barges hitting it.

A great explanation of the development of GWR lines. The Drawing at @6:09 of the rail ferry at Black Rock (with the light house on it) Portskewett, Wales also includes, it's rival's tunnel Sudbrook Pumping Station (still existing without the chimneys) in the background.

I honestly didn't knew about the Barry Railway proposal, that something completely new to me! Lovely video and really enjoyed it

Used to live backing on to Chipping Sodbury Station. So I was the small boy that persuaded Dad to take me down there to wave to the local stopping train - with the regular engine being the museum engine City of Truro. The main line services were request stop, so when we went to London the South Wales express headed by a King class turned off onto the platform track and stopped for us. On the way back we had to get to a particular door so the Guard could check we were off. Don't think the request stop thing was because our next door neighbour was the stationmaster.

Having grown up in Newport I was very aware of the Severn Tunnel and often used it on my trips to London to visit family on the British Rail rolling stock operating back then. Thanks for pointing out the lost stations on the Bristol side of the Bristol Channel! 👍

Great video and story as usual. Good see my old friends the Barry Railway mentioned. They were a really precocious company with their plans. A number of viaducts in Wales were built so they could bypass other companies lines. Great for relic hunters! Thanks

Great video. I live near this line and have travelled on it many, many times, but never knew any of these stations ever existed.

I've spotted the mistake, Badminton Station didn't close in 1961 as mentioned on the screen caption, the closure was delayed until 1968 due to an agreement between the GWR and the Duke Of Beaufort that Four trains a day would call, this was the condition layed down to the GWR so they could build the railway on His land.

5pm Sunday. Just seen Jago Hazard now the Whitewicks. Happy Days. I will look at my 1929 original GWR map.

That was fantastic thanks Paul. Love visiting these old stations. Thanks for taking me along. Please take care

"Chipping Sodbury" -- sounds like a good invective for when your fish and chips are served cold! 🙂

hello Paul and Rebecca , very cool interesting video as always , love seeing the old photos of places that used to be there , really well done and thank you 😊

Thanks Paul for this one.I’ve travelled many times on this route and realised there were stations now gone,so this fills in the gaps.

Lovely to see my local DS's on your videos, thank you for sharing! I've walked many times up the old Dramway it's a wonderful walk

The channel that just keeps giving! Thank you for a really interesting video. Looking forward to more .

Very interesting as usual. I love the Roman stuff but good to see you back on the railways. (repeat of John Betjeman's "Metroland" on TV was good today. The story of "Quainton Road" station particularly interesting).

Fantastic! I knew this area so well when I used to work along it. I even worked on Winterbourne Viaduct while the trains were running at full speed, an exhilarating experience because there wasn’t sufficient clearance between the train and parapet which meant you had to curl up into a ball! Coalpit Heath and Somerford station buildings were still in existence until relatively recently; Somerford looking like it has been replaced by a sub station for the electrification of the line. I was aware of several tramways (dramways) in the Coalpit Heath area so really good to see some evidence of one. A pleasure to see the line again after all these years, so thank you. Oh, and an excellent history of the line, including the New Passage ferry! I presume the New Passage route was attractive because you paid by the mile travelled; it was therefore so much cheaper by that route for a ticket to South Wales! Ever thought of visiting Pilning station (near east end of Severn Tunnel)? It is half disused; the Bristol bound platform is still in use but the Cardiff bound one isn’t - a station only used in one direction!

Great vid and with Winterbourne on my doorstep (and where I went to school) it was nice to see some local stations and learn something new, as with all these videos. Keep up the great work both.

Great stuff - Ram Hill is a regular location for a bit of railway photography - and was great for Lockdown dog walks....very quiet..

Well done both, yet another wonderful production.

Wow, that's some research..beautiful part of England over the border....there's an old railway Cwmaman to Mountain Ash.

I am always in awe of the pictures and am always amazed by aqueducts or anything of those heights? Thank you again keep up the great work.

Thank you for the tour today, Paul. Always look forward to them. See you on the next. Cheers Paul! 🇬🇧🙂👍🇺🇸

Hullavington to Swindon was part of my old maintenance patch, so it's nice to see it again, not changed much since I moved on last year! Also triggered the memory of finding enough damsons from the trees at Brinkworth Station to make two giant crumbles. Looking photos through the years I don't think those trees were around in the time of the station though, unfortunately. There's a building that I've always assumed was from when Hully was a more important railway location as it is in keeping with the style. I can't remember now if it's viable from the public side of the fence, but would be in the industrial bit between the two vantage points you recorded from. There is some bits of platforms left at Somerford on the north side, or at least there was in 2014/15 when I remember trying not to trip over them while attending a failure! They were in fairly poor condition and overgrown though, and sadly not visible from anywhere publicly accessible (indeed even railway staff's access rights have got a bit more tenuous there in recent years).

Very good video Paul, I do love abandoned railways analysis

fascinating video! Lovely memories for me, but slightly different from some of the people in the comment section, as its not related to daily travel or familiarity with the locations. No, you see, back when I was alive (!) from my early teens and well into my 30s, I was beguiled by photography and my ideal day out, was to jump into my car and head off to a nice stretch of countryside and spend the day taking photos of trains. I would study those wonderful old Landranger OS maps, jump into my fire-engine red Ford Capri and be off....free as a bird. Of course, with work (I was a TV Cameraman, working in London for the late 80s-90s, before returning to my hometown of Swansea) and girls, time of course, became more limited, but I would try to get away often through the spring and summer days, like you, hiking for miles over our glorious countryside. Having now lived in Brunei for nearly 14 years, perhaps because there are no railways here, I have learned to appreciate even more, the sheer History, the UK has in every square mile of its land. Now I'm hitting 60, I doubt I will ever ramble over the countryside again anytime soon, so, please keep making these videos!

Ah yes, we were talking about this in Wessex Ways podcast!

What a Lovely story Paul & with great views - Thank you for sharing Paul 🙂🚂🚂🚂

another brilliant vid thanks for sharing

I'm gradually making my way through some of your railway videos. I haven't come across any that mention the old Folkestone Railway Station. There are 3 stations i'm aware of in Folkestone. West Central and Folkestone Harbour. The Golden Arrow pulling the Orient Express from Edinburgh to Folkestone where it then boarded a train to France. The old station is still there. There is also the Dover Station that you can still walk through.

Great video. Many thanks. You told the story beautifully.

I am Fiddling "Swinging on a Gate" on my Strad......

Watching from the State of Mississippi USA

Briliant Video again Paul, I love that area.

TY, very informative & enjoyable! 🙏🙏

Another interesting video Paul, thanks

Great Video rail plus Coal Pit

Brilliant video as always, I was interested there to learn about how the gwr became known as the 'great way round'.

I'm sure that Coalpit Heath station building was still there last time I visited, but that was about 20 years ago!

So enjoy your videos! ❤️

What a tragic decision to cull all these lines & stations, they would have been gold dust today with lightweight carriages,,it would have genuinely provided alternative to car travel, all short term vision a real loss to us all.

I’m from Barry. On Barry docks, they had all the old steam trains laid up ready for scrapping. I use to play on the trains when I was a kid. So sad to see them gone

Hi Paul, and no Rebecca this time, fairly new to your wonderful channel, thank you so much for all your efforts. You may have covered it in previous years but have you ever dealt with the GWR Terminus further West into South Wales at NEYLAND ? There is a wonderful book called BEHIND THE STEAM, which charts the life of the the Railway there and the rise and fall of the Town due to the Railway, narrated by a young man who joined the depot in his teens as a firebox cleaner !! and slowly worked his way up to cleaner then passed fireman then eventually to driver. It's written by himself Bill Morgan and his daughter Bettie Meyrick and charts life in the early 1900's right through to when the line was eventually closed. A VERY interesting read and probably a line worth investigating - if you have not already done so, if you have please let me know as I would love to read it. Once again many thanks for all your efforts. John Horne.

Cheers for posting Paul interesting clip of Ram Hill coal mine.Theres a good book on the dram way covering the line down to the River Avon.cheers Lee

The line from Carmarthen to Aberystwyth being closed is the biggest crime in the history of railways in Cymru to date. Can't wait to see you perhaps cover it one day, if there's anything of note to say about it, e.g. a rant on much needed reactivation of some lines.

Some suggest that Meopham in Kent or Branscombe in Devon may be the longest village in England too!

Very interesting video. Plus that viaduct is massive but incredible. 😍

Just east of Chipping Sodbury, the River Frome crosses the line on an aquaduct; one of two such cases of a natural waterway crossing a railway via aquaduct near Bristol. The other being the Land Yeo near Long Ashton. I don't know how common this is.

There are a few villages claiming to be the longest. Another is Stewkley in Buckinghamshire, the High Street is 2 miles long.

Nice one.

Where was the lovely Rebecca?! On the Golden Valley line you,ll find a few more lost station sites;-Ashton Keynes,Cricklade,Chalford & Cirencester & Tetbury which were on branch lines from Kemble Junction

All close to me, there’s a couple there I didn’t know about

I'll have to go and look at some of these. Only live 20 minutes walk from Bristol Parkway

The Dramway from Coalpit Heath would make an interesting video for you - there were two separate horse-drawn lines southwards. One, the Bristol & Gloucestershire, became the Midland Railway line into Bristol that closed c.1970; the other, the Avon & Gloucestershire, ran down to the Avon near Keynsham and stayed horse-drawn until it closed.

You really need to come to torbay, you will love the railway heritage

It's a shame that the other half of the Barry Railway's scheme didn't get off the drawing board: Ewenny via Porthcawl to Aberavon Seaside on the Rhondda and Swansea Bay - this would have provided an easily graded route for goods trains, getting them off the Main Line west of Cardiff.

No mention of Pilning station when talking about connectivity. It currently has only two trains per week and huge potential given there is a distribution park and artificial surfing lake nearby

Like old times, abandoned stations

I have travelled from Little Somerford to Bristol. The last time was in 1960.

58 years of use and they all ended suddenly in 1961. Before Beeching. I.m guessing this was part of gradual rationalisation which might have been going "unnoticed" if Beeching hadnt arrived and killed off a lot of the network "overnight".

I am from South Wales. Quite a few places where there were stations have now become commuter housing estates. If only the lines still existed how much less pollution and congestion there would be.

Great video but you forgot the severn railway bridge carrying the railway across the River Severn between Sharpness and Lydney. It was built in the 1870s by the Severn Bridge Railway Company, it was 4000ft long with 21 spans, primarily to carry coal from the Forest of Dean to the docks at Sharpness; it was the furthest-downstream bridge over the Severn until the opening of the Severn road bridge in 1966. When the company got into financial difficulties in 1893, it was taken over jointly by the Great Western Railway and the Midland Railway companies. The bridge continued to be used for freight and passenger services until 1960, and saw temporary extra traffic on the occasions that the Severn Tunnel was closed for engineering work. It was eventually demolished between 1967 and 1970 because of and accident in October of 1960 when 2 barges ran into it causing 2 of the spans to collapse into the river, deemed not economical to repair. At low tides you can still see the wrecks of the barges that ran into it.

on google maps you can see some bit of the ferry station.

With the abandoning of the London & South Wales, the GWR had to build a station at Roath on the original South W|ales line in suburban Cardiff

Great video Paul,just one thing to point out is that Meopham is reportedly the longest village in U.K.

very intresting thanks, have you anything on the old brill line, bucks.

When my parents lived in Chippinsodbury(sp) they used to take the Welsh Express to get to London. This would have been around 1949-1955. They were told they could get the Welsh express as they were allowed to stop any train if you lived on Badminton’s Estate. Seems Lord Badminton as a concession of letting the rail line through his lands, got a rule that allowed people to stop any train running through. Making any train subject of a request stop. The first time they did this the station masters wife gave my mom a shopping list when she found out my parents were headed to London.

Great channel, I have been catching up with the earlier videos. In your disused station list, is a station still disused if it is now used as a nice coffee shop or other use?

Great video, But I think the village of Mark in Somerset is the longest Village in the country and is in the Guiness Book of Records as such.

Badminton station is actually in the parish of Acton Turville. Little Somerford station was on the road from Great Somerford to Little Somerford. As you went under the bridge going into Little Somerford, the road was immediately to the right after the railway bridge. You went up a slope to the station. I am surprised that you didn't go down to Great Somerford and Malmesbury and ticked off two more disused stations. The station building at Great Somerford is still there and was 1/2 a mile a way from the Little Somerford. Little Somerford has a platform I think. Malmesbury has Station car park but there are no buildings left.

I think that's being a bit hard on GWR. The Severn tunnel, which was started in 1873 and was not opened until 1886. It was exceptionally difficult to build, and subject to continued infiltration of water at a high rate (about 50,000 tonnes of water have to be pumped out daily). It could only be built from the two portals of course, and there were not modern tunnelling machines available. It was by far the longest underwater railway tunnel to be built at the time, and, at over 7km long, it maintained the world record as the longest such tunnel until 1987 when the Channel Tunnel was opened. That's a period of over 100 years, and gives an idea as to its difficulty. It was also built to broad gauge standards, which made it an even bigger task, and whilst that might be considered to be part of the mistake of the GWR, it has proved to be extremely useful when the line was electrified to Wales as it had sufficient clearance. The tunnel only had to be closed for 6 weeks to do the work compared to many times that if the tunnel bed had had to be deepened. It's not as if the tidal Severn was an easy river to bridge either, it's has a huge tidal range, and putting a bridge across it in the middle of the 19th century would have been beyond the technology of the day. The Forth Railway Bridge, which has a much smaller tidal range, wasn't built until 1890. nb. the problem with putting in small(ish) stations on long distance mainlines is that it disrupts timetables for express trains. The GWR mainline is an electrified 125 mph railway with a considerable number of trains. Try and put stopping trains onto a two track mainline like that and it will cause major timetabling problems. It's very different to the four track section from Reading to London. It's an inherent problem with railways, which is why high speed lines are built without a lot in the way of intermediate stops, and they sometimes parallel existing lines for local traffic. Of course the GWR mainline isn't a true high speed line, but the section from Swindon to Newport via Bristol Parkway is rather similar in terms of the traffic pattern. Brinkworth has a population of about 1,300 people, and I doubt that serving that number would justify the disruption it would cause to the timetables on the express trains. It's just a problem of combining stopping trains with high speed express trains.

Hi Paul, the bridge you were on at coalpit heath is called the ha'penny bridge as that was what miners were charged to cross it. The next house down from the little car park has the dramway embankment running through their garden. Going the other way, there was a connection from the main line to a freight line which served frog lane pit up until the 1940s. The line from the station to the freight line seems incredibly steep in railway terms and I presume only a wagon or two was ever pulled up it. The dramway was created to move coal from the coalpit heath area mines down to the river Avon near willsbridge. Fair few remains left such as embankments, sleeper stones and a tunnel. The midland railway used some of the dramway trackbed to get to Bristol.

cheers

Would appreciate something on Radyr's lost shunting yards.

love it loacl stuff to me ... forest of dean

Very good. How about the Sharpness to Lydney bridge over the River Severn?

And next is the horrifically inadequate tunnel, which frightened so many passengers. Looking forward to your opinions on that.

Paul & Rebecca, have you ever investigated tunnel portals that look like castles? I would love to see them. Jerry from Jarratt, Virginia, USA

Big fail. Roads closed between Dolgellau and Fairbourne. Thanks Beeching where the train

Longest village in England is Meopham near Gravesend in kent (Pronounced mepham)

Loved this one, Paul - always interesting to see closed stations on open lines. The GWR were still building lines quite late on and well into the 20th century weren’t they?

Nothing more annoying than a railway line running with stations closed on it.

what's the name of the tunnel ???.....crackin' video paul .......🙂

we put our otm's where chipping sodbury station use to be

If you’re ever in or around Royal Wootton Bassett I’d love to meet up and buy you a coffee and potentially cake as a reward for some very entertaining and informative videos

This video had a bit of a feeling of @adventureme about it with the old photos! Perhaps you could do a collaboration at some point!

Until WWII (with the exception of Southern Railway Commuter lines) passenger trains were for some Middle Class people and Upper Class people (the few). Most people were Working Class that lived within walking distance of their work. The mass did not earn enough to travel anywhere. On these Passenger Trains for the well off if you got on you would usually exoect a compartment to yourself. Passenger trains have always been failures. Lines closed Pre-grouping, lines closed on the Big Four, lines closed before Dr Beeching. Dr Beeching just closed some more lines that earned nothing that had more staff than passengers. Lines have closed post Dr Beeching or been replaced with trams. This rose tinted, romantic view of wonderful steam railways that were used by the masses is based on perpetuating Trades Union guff. Railways are still failing: when overbooked inter city trains arrives late and costs more than a quicker flight. Do I hate Trains? I have just completed a £25,000 OO gauge model railway with 60+ locos and I am old enough to remember that for years after steam ended there was still soot everywhere on and around stations

I thought Stewkley was the longest village?

Any chance you could put your captions up for a second or two longer, I don’t read that quick 😅

Church Bells in the Distance or am I hearing things ?

I pride myself on being able to spot disused transport infrastructure but I'm ashamed to say that, despite working in the area, I never once spotted the New Passage line, but maybe that's down to the M4, M48 and M49 motorways obliterating most of the evidence!

"gorgeous viaduct" it certainly is

NO Rebecca||??????