Shipping services across the Severn

[whole diary]

[grahame]

There's an old postcard being shared here on Facebook of Barry Railway cruises across the Severn Estuary and the question being asked as to whether a service could / should resume.  One commentator suggested that bus and rail links are needed.

At the Barry end, the line that terminates at Barry Island station used to continue on through a tunnel to Barry Pier station; last steamer called there in 1971 and the station officially closed in 1976.  Like so many seaside and other branch lines, cut back.

Notable on the advertising postcard - just how many of the locations served across the channe in England no longer have a rail link - Clevedon, Burnham, Lynmouth.  Two more have a rail link that's disconnected for all but occasional used from the national network - Minehead and Watchet.  And the final destination - Weston-super-mare does still have a station. Looking at old maps, railway tracks used to run closer to the town, but was that a goods yard or terminal platforms?



Is there any scope for a cross-Severn service again, and if so for what traffic and serving where?

[johnneyw]

I'm pretty certain that I've heard talk of a service to and from Swansea over the years.... perhaps from Ilfracombe?  Whether there would be sufficient customers for the service.....well, there's been nothing happening so far.
I would venture that any service further east would find it difficult to demonstrate cost or time savings over existing road and rail options.

[grahame]

I'm pretty certain that I've heard talk of a service to and from Swansea over the years.... perhaps from Ilfracombe?  Whether there would be sufficient customers for the service.....well, there's been nothing happening so far.
I would venture that any service further east would find it difficult to demonstrate cost or time savings over existing road and rail options.

As a commercial service to get from "A" to "B", I would wish to see traffic figures / projections; as a leisure trip perhaps via Lundy ...

Time savings would be so hard to demonstrate at the sort of frequency involved as the wait for the scheduled service unless frequent would, I suspect, outweigh any gain in the actual transit time.  And Ilfracombe is not exactly motorway connected.

[rogerpatenall]

I suspect that the terminal platforms at WSM were the old Locking Road station

[Witham Bobby]

I'm pretty certain that I've heard talk of a service to and from Swansea over the years.... perhaps from Ilfracombe?  Whether there would be sufficient customers for the service.....well, there's been nothing happening so far.
I would venture that any service further east would find it difficult to demonstrate cost or time savings over existing road and rail options.

Ilfracombe isn't all that easy to get to, though.  I know the town and surroundings are a majour tourist area, but it's not well populated for around 35 weeks a year

If only there was a railway there

[Noggin]

As others say, amongst other things, I suppose the trouble is that there's not really a suitable rail/road connected port on the English side.

So whilst on one hand a commuters/shoppers ferry from Cardiff Bay to Weston would be a reasonably short trip, getting to the pier on the English side would be a PITA^▸ ('pain in the a**e'), so you might as well do it on a 1h22 train or 1h10 car journey which won't leave you feeling seasick.

Similarly, whilst there might be enough Cornwall to South Wales freight to fill a ferry, I doubt the numbers stack up even time-wise - by the time you've driven your artic to Ilfracombe (or wherever), loaded it, offloaded it etc, you might as well have just left the truck on the Motorway. In modern logistics, predictability is critical.