Avon and Gloucestershire Railway

The Avon and Gloucestershire Railway was an early mineral railway, built to bring coal from pits in the Coalpit Heath area, north-east of Bristol, to the River Avon opposite Keynsham. It was dependent on another line for access to the majority of the pits, and after early success, bad relations and falling traffic potential dogged most of its existence.

It was five and a half miles long, and single track, and 4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge. It opened in part in December 1830 and carried its last traffic in January 1904, having been near-dormant since 1844. It used horses to pull wagons. Part of its route is accessible today as a footpath, and signs of much of the route are still visible.

In the latter years of the eighteenth century, coal pits were opened up in what became the northern and eastern parts of the Bristol Coalfield and the Somerset Coalfield. Extracting the coal was only part of the process, and bringing it to market was the necessary next step; before proper roads existed, land transport of heavy bulk materials posed huge challenges, although rivers and canals provided a partial solution.

The important industrial city of Bristol generated a massive demand for coal, for domestic and industrial purposes, and the proprietors of pits in the Coalpit Heath area, about nine miles north-east of the city, turned their attention to wagonways and tramways as a solution to their transport problem. Numerous schemes were put forward, but none gained the necessary financial support until the Bristol and Gloucestershire Railway was formed, in October 1827. In this article the Bristol and Gloucestershire Railway will be abbreviated to B&GlosR.

It was to be a horse-operated railway, running from pits in the Coalpit Heath area to a wharf on the Floating Harbour in Bristol. During the meetings to determine the support for the proposed railway, the Kennet and Avon Canal company had expressed a desire that here should be a branch to the River Avon, with which the canal connected, near Keynsham, and this was apparently agreed to. This was to enable the Canal company to convey coal to Bath and further east to the Wiltshire towns it served.

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