Mangotsfield railway station

Mangotsfield railway station was a station on the Midland Railway Bristol and Gloucester main line and was situated about five miles to the north east of Bristol in what is now the suburb of Mangotsfield.New buildings were provided by the architect to the Midland Railway, John Holloway Sanders in 1883.The station was the junction for the Mangotsfield and Bath Branch Line that led to Bath Green Park railway station and on southwards over the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway to Bournemouth. It had six platforms, including a bay platform used by the passenger service to Clifton Down using the Clifton Extension Railway. The latter services were discontinued in 1940 following the outbreak of war and were never reinstated. Part of the line to Bath now forms the Avon Valley Railway, which has its headquarters at Bitton.The line to Bath was strengthened in the 1930s so as to take heavier locomotives and the station was very busy until the 1960s, when the Beeching Report recommended closure. The station closed in 1966 when services between Bristol and Bath on the line were withdrawn; stopping services between Bristol and Gloucester on the Midland line had been withdrawn in 1965. The last regular through passenger trains to use the third side of the triangle, which connected Bath and Gloucester but bypassed the station itself was the Pines Express in 1962. Fast trains continued to pass through the station ended in 1969 with the re-routing of the Bristol to Gloucester services via Filton.