The Bristol Railway Archive

Putting the boot on the other foot; did visiting excursions ever get hauled here by "something exotic"?

The only 'exotic' haulage I can recall down the Midland in the mid 60s were EE Type 4s and Sulzer Type 2s.

Did any of you ever attend schoolboy internationals at Wembley? I recall going to two ...

As promised, I am posting the working timetable transcript for a typical mid-August Saturday on the Midland line between Gloucester and Bristol in 1954 in Microsoft Excel. Just a few notes :
1) All times are in 24-hr format - the original timetable showed a.m./p.m times. 'Hal-minute' times have been ...

This was happening well into the 1960s too.

Yes - I do recall that. The difference in 1954 was that the LMR was still a very separate entity to the WR. This is I think borne out in the entries at Stoke Gifford which show crew changes there also. In reality these were probably just for dropping ...

Here is a compacted transcription of the Working Timetable for the Bristol Midland line for a typical August Saturday in 1951 which can be downloaded. It's in Excel format but you can print it out from the download if you so wish....

https://www.dalesman.net/rail/august-saturday-1951-midland-line ...

.... and in the same working timetable almost by way of an addendum was the following ....

https://www.flickr.com/photos/galatea5699/51652909466/in/album-72157720101844388/

Summer Saturdays Loco Changes at St Philips Marsh
A handful of summer Saturday expresses originating in the West Country ...

So would that have meant Bath (Midland) based locos being used on Portishead locals? Or just the Bath crews?

Yesterday I received (after purchasing on Ebay) a BR (LMR) working timetable for the Derby - Bristol route (and branches). If anyone is interested I have scanned from this and uploaded to Flickr the Summer 1954 working timetables for Mangotsfield to Bath Green Park and vice versa. The tables do not ...

Here (amongst the other stuff) are two instances captured in rather poor B&W photos of 40s at Charfield....

https://www.flickr.com/photos/galatea56 ... 7614045588

Regarding the raft of withdrawn southern locos, I'm sure I read somewhere that they were not allowed through the Severn Tunnel en-route to South Wales so had to go the long way round.

That's correct Roy. I think there was always a fear that bearings would run hot which could pose a real problem 2 ...

A few of you of a certain age may be interested in photos I have recently uploaded to a new Flickr account. You can view them here :

https://www.flickr.com/photos/190629649@N06/albums

I hope you can find them enjoyable, despite the very amateurish attempts using a cheap camera!