It’s a lovely summers day and I’ve brought myself down to Bristol Harbour. Bristol Harbour used to have a network of track that spanned for 5 miles which connected the docks to the GWR mainline at Bristol Temple Meads. The railway opened in 1872 and remained in operation until 1987, although sections of the network were closed prior to this in 1964. The preserved trains which run up and down the harbour now are the same engines which used to pull the freight trains along the harbour and were built in Bristol as well.
M Shed itself is now a museum which is dedicated to the past, present and future of Bristol. Back in it’s heyday, M Shed was one of the many cargo sheds which lined the docks and used to store the cargo which was unloaded from the ships which came into port.
As well as the railway, perhaps the most striking image along the docks are the cargo cranes. Although no longer used for lifting cargo off of ships, they are still open to the public to explore on certain days throughout the year. Today however, I was happy to just make do with the steam train and enjoy the glorious weather.
There used to be 8 cranes which spanned the dockside next to M Shed however only 4 of these electric cranes remain to this day. Each crane has a lifting capacity of 3 tonnes however there were times when larger and heavier loads needed to be extracted from ships on the dock side. It is for this purpose that the Fairbairn Steam Crane was built which still survives and can be seen in operation to this day. This crane had an immense load limit of up to 35.56 tonnes. Cargo of this size was not common at Bristol so the crane was only used occasionally throughout it’s working life.
The locomotive today is an 0-6-0 saddle tank called Henbury which was built in 1937 by Thomas Peckett & Sons. She was part of a large fleet of steam locomotives which worked at the docks at the time, however she is now only 1 of 2 surviving engines from the time. The journey takes us from outside M Shed, below the cargo cranes and along the water front up towards the SS Great Britain.
The line you see above which curves to the left is now out of use, but would have taken you up to the goods sheds at Bristol Temple Meads. The track runs for a short section after the curve but then seems to stop abruptly. It’s unlikely we will see trains travelling up here any time soon but who knows. The harbour railway is unique in that there is nothing separating the track from the pedestrian pavements. It’s no wonder the train has to go so slowly along here.
