Mangotsfield railway station

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Mangotsfield
Mangotsfield railway station in 1973
Location
Location	Mangotsfield
Area	South Gloucestershire
Grid reference	ST67617666
Operations
Pre-grouping	Midland Railway
Post-grouping	London, Midland and Scottish Railway London Midland Region of British Railways
Platforms	6
History
1 May 1845	Opened
4 August 1869	Rebuilt 805m south
7 March 1966	Closed
Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom
Closed railway stations in Britain A B C D-F G H-J K-L M-O P-R S T-Z
UK Railways Portal

Mangotsfield railway station was a station on the Midland Railway Bristol and Gloucester main line and was situated about five miles to the north east of Bristol in what is now the suburb of Mangotsfield.

The station was the junction for the Mangotsfield and Bath Branch Line that led to Bath Green Park railway station and on southwards over the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway to Bournemouth. It had six platforms, including a bay platform used by the passenger service to Clifton Down which ran over the Thirteen Arches viaduct. 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, which has its headquarters at Bitton.

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 The station closed in 1966 when services between Bristol and Bath on the line were withdrawn; stopping services between Bristol and Gloucester on the Midland line had been withdrawn in 1965 and the last regular through passenger train to use the third side of the triangle, which connected Bath and Gloucester but bypassed the station itself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 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 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's play "The Ghost Train" after Ridley found himself stranded there overnight.

The station is now on the route of the Bristol & Bath Railway Path, part of National Cycle Route 4.

[edit] Services

Preceding station	Disused railways			Following station
Staple Hill Line and station closed		Bristol and Gloucester Railway Midland Railway		Yate Line closed
Terminus		Mangotsfield and Bath Branch Line Midland Railway		Warmley Line and station closed

[edit] References

• Passengers No More, by Gerald Daniels and L A Dench (Ian Allan, 2nd ed, 1974)

[edit] External links

• Pictures of Mangotsfield
• History of the Avon Valley Railway

Coordinates: 51°28′33″N 2°28′59″W / 51.4757, -2.4830