Restoring a Railway Station

A unique and fascinating insight into what it takes to restore a railway station from scratch, with images from throughout the process.

In 1871, the Midland Railway published its Additional Powers document for the Gloucester and Berkeley New Docks branch. This was to start from the existing Berkeley Road station on the Gloucester to Bristol main line, to the village of Sharpness and the Gloucester and Sharpness canal. There was to be an intermediate station at Berkeley. The line opened in 1876. Fast forward in time to 1964 and the branch line closed to passengers meaning both Sharpness and Berkeley stations were redundant.This book describes the original Midland Railway Berkeley station building, how the facilities at Berkeley developed over the years and how the line declined gracefully until closure. It follows the story of decay and finally demolition in 1984 when the site was cleared and covered over by waste soil.The story continues with the formation of the Vale of Berkeley Railway in 2015. There was then an impetus to discover the old station site to locate exactly where the building was and in the absence of any formal drawings, what the internal spaces may have been. In August 2016, the first sod was turned and so began the project to rebuild Berkeley railway station in its entirety.