A day out on the railway
Newport and Gloucester
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© Geoff’s Rail Diaries 2014
Arriva Train Wales offer trips out for those of a certain age - “Club 55” - providing a return ticket to destinations on their network for £23 (or, a real bargain this one, £22 with a railcard...). If one possesses a railcard, the trip needs to be a reasonably long one to make it worthwhile. We settled on Gloucester, via Newport. I joined my friends at Church Stretton for the pleasant run down the Marches to Newport. If we were on time, we’d arrive a minute after a Gloucester train left. We didn’t - we were perhaps 7 minutes late - so we would have almost an hour to wait at Newport. There’s a new and modernistic station entrance and footbridge at the west end, which may not suit the traditionalists, but is
Geoff’s Rail Diaries
23 October 2014
clean, bright and spacious. I’d never travelled on the line from Severn Tunnel Junction to Gloucester - it’s a most attractive stretch of railway, running as it does beside the Severn estuary for part of its length. We noted the lock gates at Sharpness - later, after lunch, we’d spend a little time at the other end of the canal, around Gloucester’s docks, now in a gentrified state following redevelopment. Back in Newport, we boarded a northbound train - just two coaches, and passengers standing the length of the aisle. It wouldn’t be stopping between Hereford and Shrewsbury, so I’d have to change at Hereford. A quiet half-hour on the station platform there, in the gathering dusk, came as welcome relief...
Newport - the modern railway Westbound freight Bound for Milford Haven Eastbound HST Three at once More westbound freight Plateway wagons at Gloucester Sharpness Docks wagons Fireless - Barclay 2126 of 1942 Steam crane Another steam crane... Llanthony Warehouse Dry Dock "Earl of Pembroke" Gloucester Tracks and crane Murals at the station