Reopening of The Line
During 2000 and 2001 the railway was rebuilt as far as Pill, and a short spur constructed to the Royal Portbury Dock to transport freight, at a cost of £21 million. The guests for the official opening ceremony were taken from Parson Street railway station to Portbury on a train hauled by Bristol Industrial Museum's Portbury locomotive on 21 December.
Local politicians and organisations have been campaigning to have the remaining 3.3 miles (5.3 km) repaired and a new station constructed at Portishead. A campaign group is aimed at reopening the station and the short stretch of unopened line. The coastal town largely serves as a dormitory town for Bristol workers, and the main route into the city, a single carriageway, the A369, is often unable to cope with the volume of commuter traffic. When current construction work is completed Portishead will be the largest settlement in the country without a link to the rail network. The Department for Transport currently does not support the proposals, estimating the costs to be too high at £17 million, and because of scheduling complications due to its use by freight trains. The 2006-2011 Joint Local Transport Plan reserves £1 million for the project. In January 2009, it was announced that Network Rail is to carry out a feasibility study on re-opening the line.
It was announced in June 2011 that First Great Western would run a test train on the line in September 2011. During the Rail Priority Conference organised by the West of England Partnership in November 2011, delegates travelled on the line, using sections of track not currently used for passenger traffic. In December 2011, North Somerset MP Liam Fox backed reopening the line for passenger traffic and, following a meeting with Transport Minister Norman Baker, expressed hopes that work could commence by 2015.
A large mural was unveiled in Portishead in 2012 in support of the line being reopened.
In March 2013, track clearance works began to allow surveying of the original line to Portishead to commence. This is potentially the beginning of the necessary work required to reopen the line for passenger use.
Read more about this topic: Portishead Railway
Famous quotes containing the word line:
“What comes over a man, is it soul or mind
That to no limits and bounds he can stay confined?
You would say his ambition was to extend the reach
Clear to the Arctic of every living kind.
Why is his nature forever so hard to teach
That though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)