History of the Wye Valley Railway

Stations, Halts and signals

When the line first opened there were six stations on the route: Chepstow, Tidenham, Tintern, Bigsweir (later named St Briavels), Redbrook-on-Wye and Monmouth Troy.

Six halts were added between 1927 and 1932 in the hope of attracting more traffic: Whitebrook, Llandogo, Brockweir, Wyesham, Penallt and Netherhope. A halt was a request stop with limited facilities.

When the line closed for passenger traffic in 1959 Tintern and Redbrook remained open for parcels and goods traffic. Both these stations closed in 1964 when the line closed completely except for quarry traffic south of Tintern Quarry.

Three of the stations enjoyed a new life after closure.

Monmouth Troy was dismantled brick by brick by volunteers from the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Steam Railway (GWSR). The station was rebuilt as Winchcombe station on the GWSR.

Tintern station is now a café. The signal box is a grade II listed building. It is listed because it is an externally unaltered early C20 railway signal box, and for its group value with the other buildings at Tintern station. It is now used as a craft studio.

The platform of Tidenham station platform was rebuilt as a loading bank for the Dayhouse quarry.

The following gallery of photographs covers 11 out of the total of 12 stations and halts. The gallery includes recent photographs of the rebuilt Monmouth Troy as well as the station and signal box at Tintern both of which are currently in use.

Monmouth Troy

Redbrook-on-Wye station

Tinplate from the local works was loaded onto open wagons at Redbrook. Raw materials were brought to the yard to be offloaded by crane. The station was well known for its well-kept flower beds tended by the station master.

Penallt Halt

Penallt Halt is just 200m from Redbrook-on-Wye across the viaduct. The buttress at the entrance to the viaduct can be seen in the background. A milk churn from a local farm stands on the platform ready to be picked up by the next train.

Whitebrook

Whitebrook had once been the home of three paper mills. However paper making ceased in the early 1880s, only four years after the line opened and many years before the halt was built in 1927.

Whitebrook memory from Mrs M . Whitmore recorded in ‘Whitebrook - A community brought to life through images and recollections’.

‘ A Mrs Whitehead who lived at Traligael, would regularly leave her car at Whitebrook Halt and go to Chepstow by train. One day she had been in the train for about ten minutes when she realised that she had left some important papers in her car. She pulled the communication cord, the train ground to a halt and the engine driver came down to see what was wrong. She explained her dilemma and asked if anyone would miss an appointment if the train was delayed. He then shunted the train back. She retrieved the papers and they went on their way! ‘ 

St. Briavels station

Llandogo Halt

Brockweir Halt

Tintern

Netherhope Halt

The halt was a on the eastern side of the line just south of the southern portal of Tidenham Tunnel.

It was the last station to open on the Wye Valley Line on 18 July 1932. It closed to passengers on 5 January 1959.

It was a steep climb down steps from the top of the bank to station level.

Platform surface

The platform surface is cinder and ash which would have been in plentiful supply from the Pannier tank engines. This surface is similar to that of running tracks before composite surfaces were adopted such as the cinder track at Iffley Road Oxford where Roger Bannister became the first runner to run a mile in under four minutes.

Cinder and ash are classed as hazardous materials today. Adam Williams of Dean Forest Railway (DFR) has advised that where a platform was originally built using these materials the DFR now use chippings compacted 1⁄4 inch to dust.

Shelter

All halts on the Wye Valley Line had simple shelters. The shelter contained a wooden bench seat for 5/6 people. The Netherhope shelter was made of galvanised corrugated iron and supplied by Joseph Ash and Son Ltd of Birmingham. They were founded in 1857, known as Joseph Ash Galvanising Ltd and are still trading today.

The Great Western Railway Company extensively used Joseph Ash for many of its track-side requirements such as water towers, lamp sheds and lube tanks.

Paint Scheme

Celia Hinton started using the train in 1956 and remembers the shelter being painted:
‘a dingy colour, either dark brown or black. Nothing special or striking. I imagine it hadn’t been painted for some time’
And goes on to say: ‘Maybe an opportunity to liven it up if it’s rebuilt!’

The colour was probably this GWR brown (stationcolours.com/gwr). A 1958 colour photo of Brockweir Halt supports this assumption. Celia Hinton has confirmed this. The name board, following the Brockweir pattern, would have been framed in white with white lettering and a brown background.

Netherhope Memories.

The end of the line: memories of the Wye Valley Railway by Celia Hinton: Published in Forest Fact and Fantasy 2017

Usually I got up in time to walk down the lane to the railway bridge by the tunnel, scrambling down the steep steps in the cutting to Netherhope Halt platform. On frosty days in winter when I had to be prised out of bed, Mum would watch anxiously for the tell-tale smoke as the train approached Tidenham station in the distance. Bolting the remains of my breakfast I would grab my satchel and often a violin case as well, tear out of the house and run hell-for-leather down the lane to the Halt. The guards knew the ‘usuals’ and would hold the train for us if we were late.

Immediately after Netherhope Halt the train entered the blackness of the mile-long Tidenham tunnel, emerging into daylight near the bleak quarry face on the Tintern side. One day, a boy from Monmouth School for Boys was larking about and snatched a girl’s beret, throwing it out of the train window into a bramble patch by the quarry. The guard told the driver, who backed up the line and stopped the train. The guard hopped out and retrieved the beret and then off we went through the woods with the glistening Wye on our left-hand side, past the Abbey, through the short tunnel and over the river bridge into Tintern station.

One of my friends remembers the train stopping somewhere in the woods for the driver and guard to get out and pick holly for Christmas. Another time after storms there was a landslide just beyond Redbrook and we were all late for school, sent to the ’San" ’ (the school Infirmary) to be checked out for shock!

Some of the guards were young and unruly: I remember one holding onto the luggage racks and attempting a backwards somersault, kicking a roof light and breaking a bulb in the process. The guards would chat to us and sometimes give us sweets – those were more innocent days.

I don’t remember the train ever being crowded during the week. A couple of regular passengers stand out – Charles, who taught Maths at the Boys’ School and walked over the Chase down to Brockweir Halt, and a lady with two cocker spaniels who travelled regularly. When there were floods on the road in Tintern and the bus was diverted via Devauden, the train was unaffected, missing the low-lying areas as it puffed along through the woods, trailing white smoke. Sometimes the line along the riverbank between Bigsweir and Llandogo would be flooded but I don’t recall whether the train was ever cancelled.

In autumn the woods blazed with russets, yellows and oranges and in spring we saw the haze of bluebells in the woods between Whitebrook and Penallt. Crossing the rattling and clanking bridge back onto the English side brought us into Redbrook station, which was usually decorated in summer with pots of flowers, bright pelargoniums set off by blue and white lobelia.

We Monmouth Girls had a lot of freedom on the train with no prefect to boss us about. In winter we had to wear full uniform of heavy maroon gymslips, belted coats and berets, while in summer we wore red checked gingham frocks and hideously uncomfortable boaters which we threw off as soon as we were on the train. In Monmouth we were not allowed to eat in the street and were supposed to walk in an orderly crocodile from Monmouth Troy station up the Hereford Road to school. Discipline was strong and I was terrified of old Miss MacDonald, the Headmistress. To us girls she seemed ancient and rigid with her white hair piled into a bun. Punishment for misdemeanour was to stand in the corridor outside her room in full view of passing disapproving teachers.

Sometimes in summer my friend would meet me off the train from school with Pixie, her Shetland pony. We’d ride bareback up the lane from the Halt, both of us on the poor pony at the same time, the front rider clutching hold of the mane and whoever was behind hanging on to anything she could grab. Mostly Pixie was remarkably tolerant, though occasionally she would rebel against the load, frisking and crabbing sideways. If she were moulting I would be in trouble with Mum for having white horse hairs all over my school uniform.

When British Railways axed the passenger service in 1959, the bus journey to school took much longer via Chepstow. There were more of us travelling to both the Boys’ and Girls’ Schools. Sitting upstairs on the bus we were often noisy and excitable and one day a boy sitting behind me on the bus chopped off the end of one of my plaits. Everyone else thought it was funny but I was outraged and felt lopsided. It confirmed my mother’s suspicions that the boys were hooligans and she was irate. By the time I was doing A levels the whole journey was spent learning French vocabulary or reading, especially if I were on a later bus after school orchestra or drama. Our homework load was heavy with much extra reading for both “A’ and ‘S’ levels, as the school prized high academic standards.

Many years later, in my twenties, I was walking with some colleagues in the woods at the far end of Tidenham tunnel. It was late afternoon in early autumn and the light was beginning to fail when we arrived by chance at the tunnel mouth. Deciding it would be less hazardous to brave the tunnel than to try to find the track in the dark we went into the tunnel in Indian file, each holding the shoulder of the person in front. In the dim light from the ventilation shaft in the middle we could sense the alcoves in the tunnel wall. It was very rough underfoot, the walls were damp and dripping in places and sounds were deadened. Charles, our self-elected leader, wore pebble-thick glasses – he was almost blind in one eye- and when he stumbled, the tension was palpable although no-one wanted to admit to feeling spooked. Towards the Tidenham end we were very relieved to see the light grow larger and larger as we approached the exit. Very soon after we reached my parents’ house, we were horrified to see and hear a goods train going down the line to Chepstow. We had no idea that the quarry trains were still running.

Today, the tunnel mouth is blocked off with rolls of barbed wire on top of the barrier. The rusting rails are just visible under fallen trees and profuse undergrowth between Bishton Bridge and
Netherhope. Bishton Bridge is shored up with steel props and there’s a growing pile of rubbish on the line there – old rotting mattresses, broken sofas, chairs and washing machines spilling out in an ugly heap.

None the less, I have seen a beautiful red fox running in the adjacent fields and disappearing into the deep cutting. In late summer a glut of blackberries grow on nearby hedges. Since the line closed, bats have colonised the tunnel and are a protected species. Sometimes when we sit out of doors in the dusk they flit and swoop noiselessly across the terrace. Plans by Sustrans to re-open the railway line for cyclists and walkers have come to nothing, but currently there’s a new incentive to open the line as far as Tintern. Maybe one day this end of the Wye Valley line will be re-opened and we will be able to cycle through the woods to have lunch in Tintern. Or maybe the derelict line will remain for ever as an overgrown haven for wildlife and a reminder of a very different era.

©Celia Hinton 2017

Memory from Peter Tyler

Tidenham

Memory from Olive Jeanes

Tony Rake’s memories of working a ballast train at Thomas (Dayhouse) quarry

Worked the morning and afternoon ballast dogfish stone trains as a second man from Severn tunnel on late 70s and early 80s , a class 37 usually with 20 dogfish (a hopper wagon for carrying limestone ballast) on , we use to leave half at Thomas quarry at Tidenham on the loop line by the old station platform which was the loading bay , we then moved on to Tintern, through the tunnel , when we got there we coupled up and pushed the loaded wagons down towards the stop block leaving the empties there for the next day , we then changed ends back towards Tidenham for the ones we left earlier.

Wye Valley Junction

Chepstow

Raising Chepstow station

On 12 February 1877, work started to lift the Chepstow station in one piece. The station was originally owned by the South Wales Railway and opened on 18 July 1850. In July 1863 the South Wales Railway amalgamated with the Great Western Railway and the South Wales line was converted from broad to standard gauge in 1872.

The platform at Chepstow was then nearly three feet lower than the train, and with the constraints of women’s fashions at the time, complaints were loud about the indignities of being unceremoniously bundled onto the train by helpful guards.

An ambitious scheme. To raise the stone station buildings in their entirety and then build up the platform underneath, was adopted and successfully carried out by Chepstow contractor Cuthbert William Whalley.

This was a new and bold project-wooden buildings were being lifted complete in America, but raising a stone building was something new.

The building, estimated to weigh 200 tons, was braced together, windows and doors in place and intact and massive timbers were threaded through to support it.

41 jacks were used underneath the ends of all the timbers and turned in unison. Over two days, Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 February 1877, the station building was gradually raised by 22 inches.

The photograph showing the innovative operation taking placed is from Chepstow Museum.

With this third class holiday roundabout ticket you could visit all the stations on the Wye Valley line – (Ticket by permission of Martin Scott)