page_title: Gloucester railway station
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Gloucester railway station / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Gloucester Central Station, with trains. View SE on the main Down platform, towards Cheltenham etc. and Swindon etc.; ex-Great Western South Wales Main Line, which runs from (London etc.) via Swindon to Chepstow, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea etc., branching off the original Cheltenham &amp; Great Western Union line at Gloucester South Junction. The lines from here to Cheltenham are joint with the ex-Midland Birmingham - Bristol main line, which join from the Bristol direction at Tramway Junction. Since the whole railway layout at Gloucester was altered in 1975 by the elimination of the ex-Midland Gloucester Eastgate Station (see SO8318&#160;: Gloucester Eastgate Station and SO8318&#160;: Gloucester Eastgate Station, with trains) with the Tuffley Loop line, and the reconstruction of Gloucester Central, all trains on the Birmingham - Bristol axis calling at Gloucester have had to reverse here, as well as those from Cheltenham. Before 1975 only trains Cheltenham - Swindon, London etc. did so, and the 94XX 0-6-0 Pannier-tank on the right is probably arriving on a train from Cheltenham destined to reverse. The 51XX 2-6-2T on the train at the opposite platform will have arrived on a train from the West, probably from Hereford via Grange Court (on the South Wales line). The 'Castle' 4-6-0 on the Up middle line is running light engine towards the nearby Horton Road GWR Locomotive Depot.
context_page_description: Gloucester railway station is a railway station serving the city of Gloucester in England. The station was originally built as the terminus of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway in 1840, but the arrival of the Bristol and Gloucester Railway and Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway in 1844, and then conversion to a through station for the South Wales Railway in 1851 resulted in a very complex layout. Subsequent closures and rationalization have left Gloucester with a station that is located off the main Bristol-Birmingham line, meaning trains that call at Gloucester must reverse except for trains that continue along the Gloucester to Newport Line.
context_section_description: The railway development at Gloucester was very complex involving four different railway companies and five distinct railway stations. The first company onto the scene was the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, which was a standard gauge line opening 4 November 1840. This line from Cheltenham was built by the Birmingham and Gloucester railway on a formation built by the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway (see below). The first station was a terminus built on land near the cattle market. This was seen as a temporary structure to be replaced by a more permanent structure nearer the docks when more finance was available, but this never happened and this structure determined the site of the station today.
  The Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway (C&GWU) opened a 7 ft (2,134 mm) broad gauge line from Swindon to Gloucester on 8 July 1844, and built their station adjacent and to the north of the Birmingham and Gloucester station. The line from Gloucester to Cheltenham was upgraded to mixed gauge so that the C&GWU could share tracks to Cheltenham, which meant trains had to reverse at Gloucester.
  At the same time as the C&GWU opened, the Bristol and Gloucester Railway also opened a broad gauge line from Bristol to Standish Junction a few miles south of Gloucester, and shared the tracks of the C&GWU into Gloucester station. In 1845, the Midland Railway, which had already bought the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, also absorbed the Bristol and Gloucester Railway. Similarly, the Great Western Railway had taken over the C&GWU, which resulted in a jointly-owned (MR & GWR), mixed-gauge station from which trains ran on shared mixed-gauge track both northwards and southwards from Gloucester.
  In 1847, the GWR opened the Cheltenham Loop line which completed the triangle junction east of the station. This allowed GWR trains to avoid the reversal at Gloucester, but so as to allow GWR passengers to access Gloucester, a link line was built to a station on the loop called the Gloucester T station. Carriages were detached from trains at the T station, turned on turntables and taken into the main Gloucester station. This operation was not very successful and so was abandoned, along with the loop line, in 1851. Hereafter, GWR trains from London to Cheltenham continued to reverse at the main station, a practice that continues to this day.
  On 19 September 1851, the Gloucester and Dean Forest Railway and the South Wales Railway opened a line southwestwards from Gloucester towards the Forest of Dean, Chepstow and South Wales. A new, 2-platform through-station was built immediately north of the existing station, although this was rebuilt in 1855 with a longer, single platform after it was found the original station was too small.
  On 22 May 1854, the Midland Railway opened a new, standard gauge railway between Gloucester and Standish Junction, thus avoiding running on the ex-CGWU line into Gloucester. This new line paralleled the old route as far as Tuffley, where the Tuffley Loop swung into Gloucester and looped back onto the main Bristol-to-Birmingham line. The MR also rebuilt the old 1840 station, lengthening platforms and adding new buildings, but because this was still a terminus and the Tuffley Loop headed eastwards, trains still had to reverse in and out of the station. This anomaly was not sorted out for another 40 years until the MR opened a new station on 12 April 1896, south-east of the existing station, on the Tuffley Loop. The old station was demolished, to be replaced by sidings, and the new MR station was linked to the GWR station by a 250-yards-long, covered footbridge.
  In 1901, the Cheltenham Loop, now known as 'the Gloucester avoiding line', was re-instated, primarily for goods traffic, but also for passengers from 1908. Between 1914 and 1920, the GWR station was expanded with a second long platform north of the running lines, two centre tracks for through movements and bay platforms. The two main platforms were also split in two with a scissors crossing in the middle. In 1951, the Western station was renamed Gloucester
caption: The station in 1962
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