Bristol & North Somerset Railway

This article describes the Bristol and North Somerset Railway, between Bristol and Radstock, and the associated Camerton line from Hallatrow to Limpley Stoke.

The Bristol and North Somerset Railway was a railway line in the West of England that connected Bristol with , through Pensford and further into northern Somerset, to allow access to the Somerset Coalfield. The line ran almost due south from Bristol and was 16 miles (26 km) long.

Opened in 1873, it joined with an existing branch from Frome to Radstock, and was later worked with it as a single entity. In 1882 the Camerton Branch was opened by the Great Western Railway to serve collieries at Camerton; it was later extended to Limpley Stoke, on the Bath to Trowbridge line. It closed to passenger traffic in 1925.

The lines primary traffic was coal, and travel to work commuting into Bristol. Both of these traffic sources substantially declined in the 1950s, with the Camerton Branch fully closed in 1951. Passenger traffic ceased on the rest of the entire line complex before the Beeching Axe in 1959, with complete closure of the line in 1973 following the closure of the last colliery in the Somerset Coalfield at Kilmersdon.

The Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway (WS&WR) was established in 1845 to build a network of lines, running from near Chippenham on the Great Western Railway (GWR) to Salisbury and Weymouth. At that time was the most important mining centre of the Somerset Coalfield, and the WS&WR included in its plans a branch from near Frome to Radstock. The WS&WR found raising money for its ambitious network difficult, and the Company sold its lines, not all of which were complete, to the GWR on 14 March 1850, confirmed by an Act of Parliament on 3 July 1851. The GWR opened the Radstock branch to mineral traffic only on 14 November 1854, built to broad gauge.

As early as 1863 the Board of the GWR had resolved to create a standard gauge line from Bristol to Salisbury through the district, and there were numerous independent schemes to serve the important colliery sites north of Radstock, and link them to the city of Bristol.

These schemes came to nothing until in September 1862 when promoters formed an agreement to make a line from Bristol, with connections to other lines there, to a junction with the newly formed Somerset and Dorset Railway near Bruton, running through the colliery areas of Pensford and Clutton, and with a branch to Camerton, where there were further collieries. It was to connect at Bristol with both broad gauge and narrow gauge lines, as well as having a tramway to the City Docks at the Floating Harbour.

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