Beginnings
The Midland Railway, based in Derby, had operated a main line linking Bristol to Birmingham since 1845. (The section between Bristol and Gloucester had had complicated origins, starting as a simple mineral line serving the South Gloucestershire coalfield, and becoming the Bristol and Gloucester Railway, absorbed by the Midland company in 1845.). Bath was a significant destination for visitors and as a city of considerable size, was a source of demand for inwards manufactured goods from the Midlands, and a route to Bath would also capture some of the colliery traffic.
In July 1864 the Midland Railway obtained parliamentary authority to construct a branch line to Bath, and the line was duly opened on 4 August 1869. At first the Bath station was a temporary building west of the River Avon, but in 1870 the extension was opened to the splendid terminus at Queen Square in the city; the Great Western Railway had opened its main line between London and Bristol in 1840, and had its own Bath station on the other side of the city.
The branch connected with the Bristol to Gloucester line at Mangotsfield by a triangular junction allowing through running direct from the north towards Bath.
Read more about this topic: Mangotsfield And Bath Branch Line
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
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“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
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“When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.”
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