tunnel















British Railways had already informed the Society in July 1965 that the bridge over Hollybush Road would be removed shortly and as an exercise for the working parties it was decided to recover ballast in Bridgnorth tunnel, with BR's permission.

Bridgnorth station was not the northern terminus when built, but the main intermediate station of the Severn Valley line being 18¼ miles from Hartlebury and 22½ miles from Shrewsbury.

Bridgnorth station was opened to the public on 1 February 1862, promting great celebrations in the town. Originally under SVR Company ownership, it was passed to Great Western Railway (GWR), and eventually British Railways in 1948.




It closed to passengers after 101 years on 8 September 1963, and to freight traffic on 30 November 1963.










The line now ends just after the modern-day station, where the line would formerly have gone through Bridgnorth Tunnel and on to the next station on the line, Coalport.
The Railwayman's Arms is situated at the SVR station and never closed, and thus became popular with preservationists.











After only two years preservationists had plans for Bridgnorth, resulting in the formation of the Severn Valley Railway Society. Vegetation was cleared, railway bric-a-brac was collected and the station buildings were refurbished. Bridgnorth station was fortunately never damaged through demolition activity. From then on preservation gained momentum until the present day.

Bridgnorth became the engineering centre of the new SVR because of the need to repair the growing numbers of rolling stock and locomotives after opening to the public when the first train steamed from Bridgnorth to Hampton Loade in May 1970.

The station is reached from High Town via a footbridge over a main road and a valley, the present bridge having opened in 1994.

The main locomotive works for the SVR are located at Bridgnorth. It is not normally open to the public because of health and safety regulations but conducted tours and open days are arranged from time to time. Major features of the locomotive works include the Boiler Shop equipped with a Noble and Lunn wheel lathe and ex-LT lifting jacks amongst other equiptment.

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