page_title: Bristol Temple Meads railway station
section_title: Goods stations
hierarchical_section_title: Bristol Temple Meads railway station / History / Goods stations
caption_attribution_description: Pre Grouping railway junction around Bristol
context_page_description: Bristol Temple Meads is the oldest and largest railway station in Bristol, England. It is an important transport hub for public transport in the city. In addition to the train services there are bus services to many parts of the city and surrounding districts, and a ferry to the city centre. Bristol's other major station, Bristol Parkway, is on the northern outskirts of the conurbation.
  Temple Meads was opened on 31 August 1840 as the western terminus of the Great Western Railway from London Paddington, 116 miles 31 chains from Paddington. The railway was the first to be designed by the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Soon the station was also used by the Bristol and Exeter Railway, the Bristol and Gloucester Railway, the Bristol Harbour Railway and the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway. To accommodate the increasing number of trains, the station was expanded in the 1870s by Francis Fox and again between 1930 and 1935 by Percy Emerson Culverhouse. Brunel's terminus is no longer part of the operational station. The historical significance of the station has been noted, and most of the site is Grade I listed.
context_section_description: The GWR built a 326-by-138-foot (99 m × 42 m) goods shed on the north side of the station adjacent to the Floating Harbour, with a small dock for transhipment of goods to barges (not seagoing ships, as the wharf was upstream of Bristol Bridge). Wagons had to be lowered 12 feet (4 m) to the goods shed on hoists. On 11 March 1872, a direct connection to the harbour was made in the form of the Bristol Harbour Railway, a joint operation of the three railways, which ran between the passenger station and the goods yard, across the street outside on a bridge, and descended into a tunnel under the churchyard of St. Mary Redcliffe on its way to a wharf downstream of Bristol Bridge.
  The B&ER had a goods depot at Pylle Hill (south of the station) from 1850, and the MR had an independent yard at Avonside Wharf on the opposite side of the Floating Harbour from 1858.
caption: A 1911 Railway Clearing House junction diagram showing railways around Bristol
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