Trains ~ Mangotsfield to Bath
a pictorial record
Having moved to Oldland Common in the autumn of 1962, I quickly became aware of the existence of an important railway link running through the village, although at that time my knowledge of the route and its importance was very limited. Within a few months of setting up home in a brand new house, the whole area was carpeted with a thick white blanket of snow, which was to last for three months, and my way to work at Bath was blocked, and blocked for many weeks to come. However, although many of the roads were impassable, the local Bristol to Bath stopping trains kept going, and soon I was to realise that if I waited at home in the warmth, around 8.05am, I could hear the engine’s whistle as the train pulled out of Warmley station in the certain knowledge that I would then have sufficient time to walk through the snow to Oldland Common station, and there catch the train to Bath Green Park, paying for my journey at Bath as all of the intermediary stations were unmanned. Having boarded the unheated train, the only view out of the heavily frosted window was a white landscape, apparently devoid of human occupation. Bitton station was soon reached, where the train would rest for five minutes or so before proceeding through the white wilderness, and eventually on into a very cold slippery terminus. Coming home the train left Green Park just after six in the evening and trudged its way through the same landscape now made even more mysterious by the complete darkness, which was only occasionally illuminated by a sporadic gas light, or a shaded light from the odd home here and there. At Oldland there was the added benefit of the platform being eerier lit by two or three electric lamps, but even they were insufficient to prevent, on one occasion, the author disembarking from the non corridor carriage and finding to his dismay that the train had stopped short of the whole platform, and the snow was at least four feet deep before my feet touched the platform slope. Such was my baptismal introduction to this particular railway line that I developed a great interest in it and many years later together with the late Robert Adley, I started the idea of re-opening the line through from Bath to Bristol, resulting in the birth of the Bristol Suburban Railway, but in the early 1970’s the idea of commuting to and from work by train was an anachronism as far as the local media, council, and population was concerned, and very few were prepared to take the idea seriously. From this abortive birth came the preservation idea, and very fortunately that nucleus of an idea has developed into the very popular Avon Valley Railway, hence this book and the pictures it contains. As you will see the book starts with a series of old pictures taken around Mangotsfield, and then follows the line through to Oldland Common when the pictures change to the more modern images of the AVR, however for those of you who wish to see pre-preservation pictures of Bitton station and its environs, I thoroughly recommend to the reader my book “AROUND BITTON” which contains eleven pictures that will certainly stir the memory or allow the younger reader a further interesting glimpse of the past.
2001
Price £6.00
ISBN: 0-9545117-4-3
