Four track for Filton Bank - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[metalrail]

Excellent pics, thanks for those!  Great to see it all completed now...  and with the existing platforms extended and re-surfaced looks more like the major station it's turning into 

[paul7575]

Excellent pics, thanks for those!  Great to see it all completed now...  and with the existing platforms extended and re-surfaced looks more like the major station it's turning into 

Overall grade 1 listed roof, Now!   

Paul

[Red Squirrel]

...the major station it's turning into

It does look like an important suburban station, arguably the only one in the Greater Bristol area.

It's perhaps not surprising that it doesn't greatly cater for motorists, given its proximity to Parkway - a small car park and a kiss-and-ride loop is all there is - but it also, to my mind, offers surprisingly restricted pedestrian access.

This is particularly true from the west; you might think there would be good direct access to Filton Avenue but it's actually rather a long way round via Nutfield Grove, and not particularly well-signposted. Nutfield Grove is midway between bus stops, so there is no easy interchange with local buses. It looks like there could have been an opportunity to open up access from Wallscourt Road South during the expansion work, which would have made it much more accessible to people to the south-west of the station, but I can see no plans to do this. When I went there today to take photos, I drove - the first time I've got there that way, and it was very apparent that parking nearby is a challenge; I eventually found a space on Filton Avenue nearly 500m away.

To the east, the station has as you might expect very good access to the eponymous MOD establishment. The size of this site however means that it obstructs access to other potential destinations such as UWE.

Filton Abbey Wood's usage figure for 2016/7 was 1.065 million, for a station with frequent direct trains to a wide variety of destinations. Clifton Down had 0.764 million in the same period, with its infrequent service to far fewer destinations. Really, FIT ought to be working harder, and I suspect that its accessibility might be a big part of the problem.

[Dispatch Box]

Has anyone noticed from those last pics, the lighting columns seem shorter on plat 4, also the lanterns used are different.

[MVR S&T]

Yes, would hope they have fitted LED lamp heads.

[Dispatch Box]

Yes, would hope they have fitted LED lamp heads.

Probably now are. Still have old sodium ones in Stroud.


Also I had seen on Points West News that Bristol Temple Meads is to undergo another total rewire. The station is now in a mess now that a lot of the old conduit and trunking is redundant due to the signalling and new platform screens 6 years ago. Was also told by a NR^» (Network Rail - home page) elecrician that it was overloaded. I can remember when it was last done, back in 1984.

[Bmblbzzz]

...the major station it's turning into

It does look like an important suburban station, arguably the only one in the Greater Bristol area.

Depends how you think of Parkway...

[johnneyw]

Whenever I have had a look at Abbey Wood during construction I've mainly got there on the 73 to the bus stop on Filton Avenue just found the corner from Chris-Emma Way, about a 5 minute brisk stroll if you know the way. I gather there might be an occasional bus service that goes to the small parking space at the end of the way but I'm not at all sure it could get there when the construction works were underway.
There's a rather obscure footpath access from there to Nutfield Grove that joins Filton Avenue but that is not signposted from memory.
Red Squirrel may have a point about accessibility (and signposting, if you ask me).

[metalrail]

...the major station it's turning into

It does look like an important suburban station, arguably the only one in the Greater Bristol area.

Depends how you think of Parkway...

Access is a major issue for it.  As Red Squirrel said trying to access it by car is virtually impossible, which is the main reason I never got around to taking any pics from the station itself during the blockade.  Was much easier access via Kipling Road / Wallscourt Rd South and onto the footbridge just to the south of the station, which again as RS mentioned would offer much better pedestrian access from Filton Avenue itself had they put in an additional entrance / exit footpath there.  But even then it involved some pretty detailed map reading to make sure I knew exactly where to find access to the footpath itself

It's basically now turned into an interchange station which is what i've used it for in the past.  Timing it right I can park up at BPW^» (Bristol Parkway - next trains), get the first stopping train to FIT, and then pick up one of the CDF^» (Cardiff - next trains)-TAU^» (Taunton - next trains) / CDF-PMH stopping services to get to where I wanted to go

I'm guessing that was one of it's greatest uses when it was the original Filton Junction station sited north of Station Rd bridge, and of course there was no Parkway station back then either, well not when all 4 platforms of Filton Junction were still in use anyway!

[Red Squirrel]

Depends how you think of Parkway...

Indeed; I did consider that! It is a conundrum; Parkway is Temple Meads' northern cousin whereas Filton Abbey Wood looks more like a suburban station - except that you can get direct trains to Brighton and Great Malvern from Abbey Wood...

Has anyone noticed from those last pics, the lighting columns seem shorter on plat 4, also the lanterns used are different.

The sharper-eyed among you may also have noticed that the running-in boards on P4 use GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s new less-legible font...

[metalrail]

The sharper-eyed among you may also have noticed that the running-in boards on P4 use GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s new less-legible font...

Yes I noticed that straight away.  Was one of the first things I noticed when they opened the new P1 at BPW^» (Bristol Parkway - next trains) and saw the new signs there, not matching any of the others.  I was actually waiting to see if they'd introduce the same ones at FIT for the new P4, and of course they have!

I don't get it...  unless you're changing all of the platform numbers to match, why just change one?  It may only be a small detail but it sticks out like a sore thumb

[metalrail]

Don't you just love how the press latch onto things...  BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) news this morning;

"Commuters around the West's rail network faced a double whammy of disruption this morning.

A broken down train between Temple Meads and Parkway blocked lines for several hours leading to rush hour delays.

And a signalling fault between the Bristol station and Weston-super-Mare meant that all tracks were blocked west of the station for some time.

Meanwhile, Network Rail say the completed work around Bristol Parkway has made travel better"

Has made travel better?  Does anyone know which unit failed and if trains were able to run up the other lines now we have four?  If it was one of the four lines and other trains were able to be diverted around it, would have been much more productive to say that thanks to the recent works, whereas the lines would have been completely blocked before we were still able to keep other trains running during this morning's disruption

But that's what you get from the press

[SandTEngineer]

It was an 1800+ Tonne freight train that stalled across the new Horfield Junction moving from the Up Relief to the Up Main, so really stitched everything up.  When it got moved by a rescue loco things got back to running again quite quickly (although obviously heavy delays), and the four tracking came into good use.

The other failure was a total signalling failure in the Worle to Nailsea area.  Took some time to solve.  Many XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))/GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) diversions via Westbury and/or Swindon due to both issues being at the same time.

[metalrail]

Ouch!!!  Still at least the four tracking did help to get things back on track (pun intended!) a lot quicker than it would have done previously

[Dispatch Box]

What happened to this site just now, could not load forum, coming up oops page not found.