Bristol Temple Meads railway station
Bristol Temple Meads Bristol Parkway is in front of the largest and most important railway station of major British city of Bristol in South West England. It was used in the operating year 2004/2005 of more than 5.6 million passengers.
Railway companies and targets
Bristol Temple Meads is currently served by three railway companies First Great Western, CrossCountry and South West Trains that connect it with numerous regional and national targets. So cross country runs on the routes from Edinburgh via Bristol to Plymouth and Manchester via Bristol to Cardiff. While South West Trains Bristol connects to the Waterloo station in London, First Great Western offers numerous regional connections.
Due to the location of the access roads, the trains leave to Wales, the Midlands, the North of England, to London and the south coast of the station all in the east. Only trains to Cornwall leave the station on the western side.
History
The name of the area in which the station is, derives from the adjacent Temple Church, which was built in the 12th century by the Knights Templar and was destroyed during the Second World War by bombs. The site was on an inland port and a neighboring property was built in 1830 the municipal cattle market.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed the original terminus for the Great Western Railway ( GWR ). The concourse had a 22 meter wide wooden roof. The system also included a parking hall and an office building in the Tudor style. Bristol Temple Meads is the oldest existing main railway station in the world and is considered one of the finest examples of Victorian railway station architecture. The operation towards Bath was taken on August 31, 1840 in 1841 reversed the trains on the Great Western Main Line finished to London Paddington.
The neighboring transit station was built 1871-1878 under the direction of Matthew Digby Wyatt Brunel's former partner. The curved concourse is 500 feet (152 m) long and has a wrought iron roof. This station replaced the 1844 resulting terminus of the Bristol and Exeter Railway, which was at right angles to the GWR station. The office building of the Bristol and Exeter Railway that still stands on the access road to the station. It was then that Brunel's railway station building was extended and connected to the new building. In the 1930s, the transit station was enlarged by two more platforms.
On the northwest side of the freight depot of the GWR, between the passenger station and the inland port was created. 1872, the port railway Bristol Harbour Railway was opened. It began between the passenger station and freight station, crossed on a bridge, the adjacent road, then crossed in a tunnel under the cemetery of the parish church of St Mary Redcliffe and ended in the further downstream shipyard. The port railway was in operation until 1964.
The GWR tracks were laid with a track gauge of 2140 mm. As of 1844, the trains of the Bristol and Gloucester Railway ( B & G) wrong on this broad gauge. 1846 B & G was acquired by the Midland Railway, which in 1853 rebuilt the track to the standard gauge of 1435 mm. On the access route to Temple Meads Station Three rail tracks were laid. In 1892 the re-gauging of the last broad gauge section. The station remained until its nationalization in 1948, jointly owned by GWR and Midland Railway ( 1923 London, Midland and Scottish Railway ).
The old station was closed in 1965 and part was left to decay for more than twenty years, until then renovated it. From 1989 to 1999 the building interactive science museum The Explanatory was housed. Since 2002, it houses the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. Both the Brunel building and the extension are now a protected monument. The also emerged in the 1870s connecting tract between the two parts of the railway station serving since 1965 as a parking garage.