Seasonal area
April 2010
Current Seasonal Area is
here
Our photography team
have come back up from Cornwall for a short break to help out
with the photography for a string of Wye Valley Railway articles.
This entailed changing at Bristol and so Temple Meads station
is this month's Seasonal Area image.
The current station
at Bristol Temple Meads is the second on the site - the first
was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (not personally - he had
men to do the difficult work) as the western terminus of his Great
Western Railway. It carried straight on from the end of Platform
1, passed to the right of the fine overall roof and then had its
own overall roof and main building alongside the current station
forecourt. The buildings largely remain today, but part of the
interior is used for carparking and trains have not run into it
for many years. Instead all traffic uses the new station, which
is located on a sharp curve and purports to have 15 platforms.
In fact platform 2 has been declassified and platform 14 doesn't
exist, while platforms 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 are the southern halves
of 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 and are purely set up to give passengers
with heavy luggage more exercise. That leaves 8 operational platform
faces, which is arguably still a couple more than it needs. Only
platforms 3 and 5 come under the new overall roof, which is very
nice and big but could do with an overhaul. A Voyager for Manchester
is seen resting in platform 3 at right while a Pacer for Avonmouth
huddles under the roof in platform 5 at left. It is raining. For
some reason the weather has been deteriorating since our February
picture.
Having asked us to
host a political poster last month on the basis that the Wye Valley
Railway section was in bits, the Planning Department has got back
to us this month and asked us to host another one on the basis
of political balance. We pointed out that our idea of political
balance was to refuse to mention the coming election. The Planning
Department told us that the longer we waited the bigger they'd
want the poster to be. Small children and those of a moderately
nervous disposition should consider covering their eyes.
The Labour Party doesn't
seem to have much more of a policy on the WVR that the Conservative
and Unionist Party, but apparently the aim of these posters is
to get our point across and encourage people to believe that such
a policy is an election breaker. Meanwhile you may be pleased
to hear that the Planning Department is having trouble sourcing
a poster for Plaid Cymru. Rumour has it that one of the Glorious
Leader was only obtained because the Tory party published it.
Regrettably there is
no daffodil picture this month.
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02/04/10