Clifton Bridge railway station

Clifton Bridge
The station site in 2012
Location
Place	Bower Ashton
Area	City of Bristol
Coordinates	51°26′48″N 2°37′33″W / 51.44677°N 2.62573°W / 51.44677; -2.62573Coordinates: 51°26′48″N 2°37′33″W / 51.44677°N 2.62573°W / 51.44677; -2.62573
Operations
Original company	Bristol and Portishead Pier and Railway Company
Pre-grouping	Great Western Railway
Post-grouping	Great Western Railway
Platforms	2
History
18 April 1867	Opened
15 September 1880	Second platform added
March 1891	Renamed as Rownham
1910	Renamed as Clifton Bridge
7 September 1964	Closed to passengers
5 July 1965	Closed to goods
Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom
Closed railway stations in Britain A B C D–F G H–J K–L M–O P–R S T–V W–Z

Clifton Bridge railway station is a former railway station in the Bower Ashton district of Bristol, England, near the River Avon. It was opened in 1867 by the Bristol and Portishead Pier and Railway Company as a single platform stop 3.4 miles (5.5 km) along the line from Bristol to Portishead. It was later taken over by the Great Western Railway and had a second platform added.

Passenger services at the station declined following the Second World War, and the Beeching Report recommended the complete closure of the Portishead line. Passenger services at Clifton Bridge ended on 7 September 1964, with goods services following on 5 July 1965, although the line saw occasional traffic until 1981. Most of the station was demolished, leaving some remains of the platforms, a retaining wall and the footbridge. Regular freight trains through the station began to run again in 2002 when Royal Portbury Dock was connected to the rail network. The line is due to be reopened to passenger traffic in 2019 as part of MetroWest, but there are no plans to reopen the station.

Clifton Bridge railway station was opened on 18 April 1867 by the Bristol and Portishead Pier and Railway Company, when services began on their line from the Bristol and Exeter Railway at Portishead Junction to a pier on the Severn Estuary at Portishead. The line was built as 7 ft (2,134 mm) broad-gauge, and was largely single track. The station was sited in Bower Ashton at the southern end of the Avon Gorge, at the bottom of Rownham Hill and near the western bank of the river. The station, which took its name from the nearby Clifton Suspension Bridge, was 8 miles 42 chains (13.7 km) from the line's terminus at Portishead, 3 miles 32 chains (5.5 km) from Bristol Temple Meads and 121 miles 63 chains (196.0 km) from the Great Western Railway's terminus at London Paddington. To the north, the railway ran along the riverbank in the gorge, and to the south through fields just outside the Bristol conurbation. The station was initially the first along the line from Portishead Junction, before Portbury.