Great Western Coffee Shop

Residents in Old Sodbury, South Gloucestershire, are set to benefit from a new five-hectare woodland after Network Rail sold the town council land for just £1.

The land was sold to Sodbury Town Council as a ‘thank you’ to the rural community which saw years of work on its doorstep during the electrification of the Great Western main line between London and Cardiff.

The land itself will now be turned into a woodland with volunteers planting trees and maintaining it.

Network Rail originally bought the land next to railway at Old Sodbury to enable it to replace an aqueduct which was too low to accommodate the overhead line equipment (OLE) required to power electric trains. A higher aqueduct was built a few metres away and the course of the River Frome altered to serve the new structure.