Prototype Bristol Area 1970s and 80s

[Yorkshire Dave]

This one of mine has gone a bit of a funny colour due to ageing of the slide.

Hi

I've put this photo through Affinity to clean it up. Is that a WR Blue Pullman hiding behind the V200 Warship?

 

[simond]

I’d say so.
Atb
Simon

 

[Renovater]

Before posting another photo i've got a few memories from the sixties and seventies which may jog others. Born in Bristol i moved to Bournemouth when i was three but i used to go back to Bristol to visit both sets of grandparents now and again, before moving back in 75.

The relatively unknown spooky station/halt inside Clifton Down tunnel.
Chasing green cat whiskered DMU from Avonmouth to Severn Beach by road.
An Ex GWR 7200 type crossing over the top of the entrance to the Severn Tunnel with a freight train near Severn Beach.
Pilning Low Level Station.
A trip from Pilning high level to Barry Island in 1966 with a climb on the engines in the srapyard.
An Ex BR 03 that was used at the srapyard next to the main line just up from Stapleton Road, could be D2135 or something close.
My first model railway exhibition at Clifton in Bristol 1969.
A class 40 coming into BR.

 

[cbrailways]

Dave. Thanks, that cleaned up slide looks fantastic now. I think I might purchase 'Affinity' as I have lots of other deterioating slides/photos that could be brought back to life that way.

I think in Bath Road shed you can see, right to left, a WARSHIP, 'BLUE' PULLMAN Power Car and a GROWLER (Class 37)?

Reonvator mentioning the model railway exhibition in Bristol has reminded me of going there once or twice in the early 1970s. I think it was held somewhere else though, but can't remember exactly where. Perhaps CABOT HALL? I think I have a B&W photo of the 0 Gauge test track there. I'll see if I can find it

Hallen Marsh. Well, I work on the S&T on the Bodmin and Wenford Railway in Cornwall, and the signalbox at Bodmin houses part of the former Hallen Marsh Junction lever frame, so its still going strong!

 

[Renovater]

The exibition was moved from Clifton not long after i went. When it was in Clifton it was right next to the park. Jaw dropping stuff that was for me at the time.

 

[Dodger]

The Bristol show was in the Vitoria Rooms on Queens Road for a few years as i remember, and I recall at least once in and large house in Merchants street Clifton. The local Bristol group my Father and uncle were in had the first showing of Yatton there.

Roger

 

[Renovater]

The Bristol show was in the Vitoria Rooms on Queens Road for a few years as i remember, and I recall at least once in and large house in Merchants street Clifton. The local Bristol group my Father and uncle were in had the first showing of Yatton there.

Roger

I think this is it here, just across the road from the park…cheers

 

[Dodger]

It was in the building that that originally stood here, it was used by the BBC for filming at one time. Clifton Merchants Hall.
Roger

 

[Renovater]

View attachment 129332

It was in the building that that originally stood here, it was used by the BBC for filming at one time. Clifton Merchants Hall.
Roger

You could well be right it was fifty one years ago...

 

[oldravendale]

Well, what the Luftwaffe failed to wipe off the face of Bristol the local burghers seem to have made a jolly good job of putting wrong.

I remember the BBC in Whiteladies Road. They did a really nice line in classic houses at the time. Young Jim will give you chapter and verse.

Oh, how I enjoyed my trips around the country as a young rep for Kodak.......

Brian

 

[ICH60]

I remember going to the Bristol Show in the early seventies at the Victoria Rooms always a good show. Then I ended up working at BBC Whiteladies Road but sadly the show had moved.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Well, what the Luftwaffe failed to wipe off the face of Bristol the local burghers seem to have made a jolly good job of putting wrong.

It's the same up and down the country. Post war town planners made a more thorough job of destroying towns and cities in one way or another than the Luftwaffe ever did.

 

[AJC]

It's the same up and down the country. Post war town planners made a more thorough job of destroying towns and cities in one way or another than the Luftwaffe ever did.

Bristol is special though. I'm not yet 40 and can remember three and a bit traffic systems through the centre - and two phases of redevelopment which in turn replaced a couple of post-war phases (and the ruination of the character of the harbour) and the wider public transport/through traffic situation is still dire.

Adam

 

[JimG]

I remember the BBC in Whiteladies Road. They did a really nice line in classic houses at the time. Young Jim will give you chapter and verse.

Brian,

Over thirty years ago now - memories are getting faint. As well as the row of classical houses on Whiteladies Road, there were several not so classical houses up Tyndalls Park Road at right angles to Whiteladies Road. I can't remember any of these houses being inter-connected at anything but ground level, and there were no lifts in any of the buildings. So you tended to keep fit.

However, the piece de resistance in the middle of the site were the wooden buildings which housed the Film Unit cutting rooms - known as "The Huts". These were put up during WW2 to issue ration books. The Film Unit camera and sound equipment was housed in another wooden hut, known as "Shangri-La".

In the seven years I was there, my Film Unit office went from a basement in a Whiteladies Road building to a basement in 15 Tyndalls Park Road and finally finished up in the top floor of 19 Tyndalls Park Road. The new extension was built in the 1980s and that had been intended to house the Film Unit and provide a new canteen. We got the cutting rooms moved, but I was still in 19TPR when I left.

Funnily enough, we managed to make some programmes while all this was going on.

Jim.

 

[Gilbert]

Just go to Broadmead and then visit Hanover....just saying...

 

[Renovater]

Bristol is special though. I'm not yet 40 and can remember three and a bit traffic systems through the centre - and two phases of redevelopment which in turn replaced a couple of post-war phases (and the ruination of the character of the harbour) and the wider public transport/through traffic situation is still dire.

Adam

I left Bristol again in 1990 so i don't know what it's really like now, but when the quickest way from the city center to Horfield north was Hotwells/Bridge valley road/Kellaway ave that's saying something...

 

[AJC]

I left Bristol again in 1990 so i don't know what it's really like now, but when the quickest way from the city center to Horfield north was Hotwells/Bridge valley road/Kellaway ave that's saying something...

That certainly sounds counter intuitive enough for a 'direct' Bristol route. Mind you, I can remember three different/overlapping failed light rail/tram schemes and have heard tales of plans to fill in the Floating Harbour. There's scope for someone's PhD on exactly how much Bristol's neighbours hate the city authorities and the negative effects on the livability of the place.

Adam

 

[oldravendale]

So, what are they going to do with the floating harbour? Turn it in to a car park? (I recognise that it would be building land). I agree - I reckon it's a case of the city councillors knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Anyway, it's a way of dealing with some of the traffic problems - tourists will simply not be bothered to visit - do the authorities not realise that the floating harbour and mud dock are a jewel in the crown?

Steph will probably be along in a minute to give chapter and verse. I only speak as an occasional visitor.

Brian

 

[AJC]

So, what are they going to do with the floating harbour? Turn it in to a car park? (I recognise that it would be building land). I agree - I reckon it's a case of the city councillors knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Anyway, it's a way of dealing with some of the traffic problems - tourists will simply not be bothered to visit - do the authorities not realise that the floating harbour and mud dock are a jewel in the crown?

Steph will probably be along in a minute to give chapter and verse. I only speak as an occasional visitor.

Brian

This would have been the '60s/'70s, Brian: a similar sort of scheme to that which got the Bath Preservation Trust going or that pushed a dual carriageway round the edge of Durham city centre (or was proposed for the middle of 'Lynn in Norfolk). Being Bristol it never happened and despite the soulless waterfront development that lines the Floating Harbour, that's a relief.

Adam

PS - here's a plan for what was suggested for the middle of Lynn (by Thomas Sharp, one of the early town planners). It'd have driven a boulevard through the middle of the medieval core of the town and, thank goodness, it didn't:
https://twitter.com/storiesoflynn/status/1152180081260924929?s=20

 

[oldravendale]

Thanks for the explanation, Adam. I agree about the soulless waterfront development. I remember it many years ago as somewhere quite exciting with warehouses etc and an operating railway, although it's nice to see the harbour railway still operating in part, even if only as a heritage line. One can only say that Leeds and Glasgow fared worse with what are essentially motorways through the centre. It looks as though Manchester is going through "gentrification" now as well, although some of the original buildings are at least included in the programme.

I hasten to say that I'm not anti-development, only against ill inspired and poorly designed construction much of which will be the slums of twenty years time.

It makes London Docklands look positively inspired, but even there the original inhabitants are being gradually frozen out by the high prices and yuppie money.

Brian