page_title: Bristol and North Somerset Railway
section_title: Features
hierarchical_section_title: Bristol and North Somerset Railway / Features
caption_attribution_description: Pensford Viaduct (disused). Taken by Rod Ward 2nd Jan 2006
context_page_description: The Bristol and North Somerset Railway was a railway line in the West of England that connected Bristol with Radstock, 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 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 line's 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.
context_section_description: The original stations were in most cases built to a standard but distinctive design by the architect William Clarke, featuring large canopies and three tall chimneys.
  The B&NSR was one of the railways carried on the Midford viaducts (see photograph above). This had three levels: the B&NSR traversed a river valley on a bridge which crossed by the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway which crossed the line and the river valley on an almost perpendicular course on a viaduct.
  The biggest civil engineering project on the line was the Pensford Viaduct over the River Chew. The viaduct is 995 feet (303 m) long, reaches a maximum height of 95 feet (29 m) to rail level and consists of sixteen arches and is now a Grade II listed structure.
  Until 1966 there was no running connection between the North Somerset route and the Somerset and Dorset line; occasional wagon exchange took place through Ludlow Pit private siding; the owner charged 1s 0d per wagon exchanged in this way.
caption: Pensford Viaduct
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