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I travelled to Yate by train for the first time last Friday and noticed there is a mothballed track that curves of the Northbound line ( level with the extreme end of platform 2 ).

Is this line still in use?  And if so where does it go?  Is it an old track to Thornbury?

I presume it must be/was a freight line or something has I know the only passenger services at Yate all head to Gloucester.

It's the branch to Tytherington Quarry. Can't tell you whether or not its in regular use though.

Thanks, John.  :)

It appears that the line is still in use:


See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tytherington_railway_station for details.

Been for a nosey this evening.

The former Grovesend headshunt which runs from roughly 6M 03C at the Grovesend Overbridge to the portal of Grovesend Tunnel at the A38 has been cleared of all vegetation. (Of which there was a lot!)

It has revealed a rustic set of red buffers still in situ right at the end, I can only assume they are planning to use this infrastructure as the Network Rail boundary ends where you can see the sleeper chained to the tracks - some distance from the current end of the line.

The last time i saw a train backed up to the buffers was in the early/mid 80's, even then it wasnt right up there or is that down, it was a class 33 with seacow type hoppers it went in via the loop then backed the train under the loader, well half or it then ran round and finished loading, from memory it was class 33 sir mount batten of Burma.

(https://preview.ibb.co/nvQ2m5/20170926_175130.jpg) (https://ibb.co/kOpTR5)
(https://preview.ibb.co/dfwKYk/20170926_175721.jpg) (https://ibb.co/m9Cttk)
(https://preview.ibb.co/gMTzYk/20170926_175727.jpg) (https://ibb.co/nP7F65)
(https://preview.ibb.co/cTkreQ/20170926_180000.jpg) (https://ibb.co/kBicKQ)

Interesting photos. Am I right in thinking that freights are still running from the quarry?

Last train ran all the way to the quarry in 2013.

Many thanks to you for posting those excellent pictures, together with your comments, Oliver.  :)

I've taken the opportunity to dredge up a previous topic (way back in 2009!) discussing the same line and have now merged it here, for completeness.

I had heard a rumour that the line was to be brought back into service for quarry traffic - not transporting newly cut stone, but receiving waste stone.

The quarry was a brilliant landmark when flying back into Filton, and was a reporting point for pilots approching from the north for runway 27.

FOSBR has recently done some work on the possibility of reopening the Thornbury line to passengers.

This project came out of a FOSBR survey in January 2016 which asked people in the West of England area what stations they would most like to be reopened. There was a strong response from Thornbury residents.

The line has recently been cleared for renewed freight traffic from Tytherington quarry, as can be seen from the photographs in FOSBR's paper here: https://fosbr.org.uk/files/20171009_tytherington.compressed.pdf (https://fosbr.org.uk/files/20171009_tytherington.compressed.pdf).

In September 2017, the final report of the West of England Combined Authority's Joint Transport Study appeared to rule out the possibility of including Thornbury in its list of possible reopenings, despite plans for significant housing development there in the Joint Spatial Plan; WECA's priority is to extend MetroBus to Thornbury.

At WECA's meeting on 30 October, however, officials confirmed, in response to a question from FOSBR, that, although Thornbury reopening is not on the agenda at the moment, it is not ruled out for the future.

The track is in place as far as the A38, from which it is now visible. The suggestion is to extend it through the disused tunnel (now in private ownership) to a site by the roundabout on the edge of the town where Grovesend Road meets Midland Way. Alternatively, a park and ride could be considered near the quarry.

Issues include the fact that the route to Bristol is not direct (as trains would travel south-east to Yate and then south-west to Bristol), and pathing at Westerleigh Junction, where north-south trains have to cross the Paddington line on the level. It is said there is room in the timetable for only one more hourly north-south service, which WECA proposes should go to Gloucester as part of MetroWest Phase 2. 

Today's Gloucester Gazette covered the story here: http://www.gazetteseries.co.uk/news/15634388.Bid_to_revive_train_station_in_Thornbury_put_to_regional_planners/ (http://www.gazetteseries.co.uk/news/15634388.Bid_to_revive_train_station_in_Thornbury_put_to_regional_planners/).

With many thanks for your update, Kempis, I've now also moved and merged here some previous posts from another discussion, in the interests of completeness.

CfN.  :)

1. There are other examples of none-direct services.   Compare mileage as the crow flies from Weston-super-mare to Newport, of if you feel that's a special case from Helmsdale to Wick or from Frome to Bath Spa.  The latter being very much on the WECA border ...

2. I know it's a practise that's faded out in GWR territory - but how about portion working, splitting and joining trains at Yate?  Such practise needs a reliability of crewing, and running to schedule to avoid some very awkward delays - so perhaps not a viable option this year?   But I do note GWR moving towards more train splitting / joining en route with 10 car IET formations shedding and gaining ECS portions to Bedminster at Temple Meads

They do it a lot on the local stoppers anyway, as quite often in the peaks a Worcester to Weymouth service will pick up an extra unit between Bristol and Westbury. So it certainly wouldn't be something new!

Looking at Westerleigh Jct: I wonder how the cost:benefit case would stack up for making a connection between the remaining stub of the Midland line after in passes south under the GW line, looping round to west and joining the down GW line to the east of Ram Hill? Southbound trains would still have to cross over at Yate to access the Midland line, but that as I understand it is not where the bottleneck lies.

For a lower startup cost an ultra light rail shuttle along the line, scheduled to arrive just before as many arrivals at Yate as possible might be worth considering. Not only would it avoid rail path issues (apart from platform dwell time) but it would also allow for a relatively inexpensive start to test the market yet still be able to expand. Think of Parry People Movers or similar, there's a lot of new stuff developing apparently, start with very simple platforms along the line of the prefab bolt together variety and you may have a workable affordable proposition.

I think a shuttle service would work well. Trains in and out of Yate are hourly in both directions and within 10-15 minutes of each other, so should be fairly simple to timetable.

Regarding the indirectness of the route to Bristol, I think this will be an issue for many people. Although well used in the peak hours, outside of these, the Frome to Bath service is only lightly used, and the bus alternative is as fast or not faster. So I suspect a Thornbury rail service will be more used by those aiming to get to Bristol Parkway, and thence for many to London, etc.

Also, I think both Frome and the proposed Thornbury station, whether on the town ring road or the A38, share a common weakness of being rather uncentral to their towns.

Yes, but if the powers that be want to add housing for 10K people, with all the recent housing that has been added over the past 10 years, then there is a very good case to place a levy on all new houses to re-establish the line and to run two trains per hour from Temple Meads.

Might depend on where the station would be compared to the proposed additional housing.

quite.  If the station can't move closer to the town maybe the town can grow to meet the station.

Thanks to all for the replies.


Thanks, Chris, and apologies to Oliver for missing his earlier update.



Point taken, grahame. As froome says, the question is how attractive the journey time would be. It would be interesting to compare the prospective journey time by rail (I've heard 48 minutes quoted) with that by road. Peak bus journeys are timetabled to take between 70 and 80 minutes. Does anyone know how long it takes to drive from Thornbury to Bristol at peak times? I know the A38 and M32 get congested.



Hadn't thought of that. Could be the answer! Would an extra platform at Yate be needed?


Interesting idea. I see that, in addition to the old Midland main line, there's also what I presume is the alignment of an old mineral line looping round near Ram Hill. So your suggestion might be easier than creating a new flying junction at Westerleigh. Speaking of flying junctions, I believe there was originally one at Yate South too; it's hard not to feel regret at what has been lost. But I suspect there are other locations with a greater need for a flying junction -- Didcot West comes to mind. I understand there have in the past been discussions between the MetroWest team and Network Rail about junction improvements at Westerleigh, but I don't think much progress was made.



Yes -- I'd wondered about a Parry People Mover, or perhaps a 153. But I think the preference locally is for through trains to Temple Meads.




Yes -- the planned development at Buckover (which I understand is controversial locally) is to the east of Thornbury, north of Tytherington. And the suggested location for the station would be as close to the housing in the south and east of the town than the original station site would be.

I suspect that the light use of off peak services from Frome to Bath relates to the light (infrequent) derive service provided and not the indirectness of the service.  For example, people don't commute against the flow into Frome because there's a gap in arrivals between 06:55 and 09:41. Going back, the gap in GWR services from 16:29 to 19:06 has been plugged with a 17:24 departure from SWR.

If you have 3 hours gaps at Thornbury, yes, you won't have many passengers at that time of day  ;)




Edit note: One of grahame's typical typos corrected, purely for clarity: on first reading, I couldn't follow what he was saying. CfN.  :)

Those bus times are simply soul destroying. cycle.travel (http://cycle.travel/map) gives an estimated cycling time of 71 mins from the fountains using a direct but laney route, and its times are not geared to Chris Froome; a regular commuter could comfortably beat that. Dwell times and congestion, as ever, kill the bus's attractiveness.

I didn't know there had been a flying junction there, but it always strikes me as silly that Yate, a sizeable town on the mainline to London, has no station on that line. How about a station there or at Chipping Sodbury with a triangular service, Thornbury and B Parkway being the other points of the triangle? </fantasy railways>

My personal observation (without any hard data) is that off-peak trains from Frome to Bath/Bristol are well patronised. The rail journey times to Bath are pretty comparable to bus times (direct, and not via Rode) from Frome Market Place. Peak bus journey times are longer. So the journey timings are competitive but the rail frequency can certainly be improved. 

The off-centre location of Frome Station will deter some travellers and the bus serves other areas of Frome. The (full) rail fare is also more expensive than bus and the bus pass factor will also be important to many.

No offence, but this statement is a textbook example of a category error : a logical fallacy in which a property is ascribed to something that cannot possibly have that property. A bus may be useful, possibly convenient, perhaps necessary - but never attractive.

Tell that to the Imber people!

If the line was re-aligned to go just South of Midland Way ending just short of the retail park it would be not that far from the old station site.

Not to you, maybe ... but it could be attractive to another bus.  Or perhaps to a bus operator ...

Good point.  Where does he think minibuses come from?