Part 4: Tintern Station
(the main intermediate station on the WVR)
|
Part 4: Tintern Station (the main intermediate station on the WVR) |
|
|
Tintern Station was constructed in the knowledge that it was going to be the Wye Valley Railway's main station. Its location was constrained by the geography of the valley and the railway's need for a straight route, which meant that the station was well outside Tintern. Once southbound trains had passed through the station, they crossed the Wye into Gloucestershire and passed through Tintern Tunnel, which brought them out into the open again south of Tintern itself. The station had a large goods yard with the biggest goods shed on the line, several sidings and a cattle dock. Its three platforms were intended to allow railtours to work to the station with heavy loads of visitors, particularly from the West Midlands, come to see the beauty of the Wye Valley and gaze at Tintern Abbey. It was merely unfortunate that the station was surrounded by fields and the Abbey was a twenty-minute walk. The station opened with the line in 1876. It was conveniently about halfway along the Severn Tunnel Junction to Monmouth Troy route which was used by branch line trains for much of the railway's career. It saw quite a few railtours, most of which used the third platform, and was occasionally used as a passing loop. Its platforms were, however, distinctly intended for branch trains at only 70 metres long. Its goods yard was not terribly well used, being so far from Tintern. Most of Tintern's heavy stuff used the Wireworks Branch anyway and so joined trains south of Tintern Tunnel, rather than work all the way up to the station. This meant that the Great Western Railway was able to find a spare bit of siding and park a camp coach at the station in the 1930s, which was very successful. A large number of parties stayed there, for about a week each, travelling around on the slightly sparse service. For a brief period the station was renamed "Tintern for Brockweir" which managed to be translated onto the official plans of the line as "Tintern for Blockley". Blockley was a station on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, about 50 miles away. After the Second World War, which largely passed the line by, the camp coach returned for the 1950s. Some additional traffic came to Tintern as wagons from the stone quarries to the south of the village tended to be brought up to the station for shunting. Special trains continued on an occasional basis. Regular passenger traffic ceased at the beginning of 1959 and Tintern station closed altogether in 1964. The track was lifted from station in 1967, with the bridge over the Wye being demolished, and although the main station building and signal box survived they soon became completely overgrown. A resurgence of interest in the line in the 1980s saw Gwent County Council begin work to transform the site. The undergrowth and some trees were cleared away. The signal box and the station building were refurbished. The gap between platforms 1 and 2 was filled in and a staircase cut into the face of platform 3. Picnic tables were provided, footpaths were created, facilities were offered for car parking, gardens were re-planted, some rail vehicles were parked alongside a new side platform to contain a permanent exhibition on the WVR and a miniature railway was installed. Subsequently a play area has gone in and some timber statues have been installed in a circle on the trackbed. Recent proposals to replace the miniature railway with a new, larger line appear to have been dropped; it is now running occasional trains. There are suggestions that it should be reorganised to accommodate a cycleway.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
As a tourist attraction in its own right, the Old Station at Tintern presents a rather difficult challenge from the public relations point of view. Engineering-wise the main issue is the bridge over the Wye at the southern end of the station, although even that should be a fairly simple task these days once the abutments are deemed to be sound. However, ramming a railway straight through a picnic site, wooden circle and play area may be a bit difficult for people to stomach. Even the people who watch the video on the WVR in the station's Mark 2 Tourist Standard Open coach and murmur things about closure being a "great crime" (of which there are an awful lot) might think twice about it upon seeing the implications of the crime being reversed. There would therefore be various points to bear in mind:
The station will be the sole passing loop on the line, so disruption will be limited to a block of three minutes in any given hour. Summer may see a more intensive schedule operated over the bottom end of the line and Tintern would be the northern terminus of such services. It would be nice to operate some form of "bus replacement rail service" which would involve coach parties being deposited on a train at Tidenham and brought up to Tintern by rail, relieving pressure on the A466 and on the car park at Tintern Abbey. Such services would quite likely be steam hauled during the peak season and the loop would be used to run the loco around (although the train would probably have run empty from Tintern Abbey station). To support this, the water tower would also be restored to working order. |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
%20JPG.jpg)