The Severn Bridge Railway was a railway company which constructed a railway from Lydney to Sharpness in Gloucestershire, England. It was intended chiefly to give access for minerals in the Forest of Dean to Sharpness Docks, and the company built a long bridge, in length, over the River Severn. The line opened in 1879.

On opening the company entered a partnership with the Severn and Wye Railway; the Sharpness branch of the Midland Railway was transferred into the group, the combined network forming the Severn and Wye and Severn Bridge Railway. The Severn Bridge Railway and the former Midland Railway branch formed the "Bridge" section of the S&WJR; the former Severn and Wye Railway formed the "Forest" section.

The line was never profitable, being dependent on the colliery activity in the Forest of Dean, and the huge construction cost of the bridge meant that there were heavy, and unaffordable, interest charges, and the S&W&SBR Company went into receivership. It was purchased by the Midland Railway and the Great Western Railway jointly, and became known as the Severn and Wye Joint Railway. When the Great Western Railway constructed the Badminton line, shortening its route from London to South Wales. a south-to-west connection was made, the Berkeley Road Loop, giving direct access from the south to Sharpness from 1908.

In 1960 two out-of-control petrol barges in the Severn struck a pier of the Severn Bridge and brought it down, severing the line. After much deliberation the decision was taken to close the line permanently and to demolish the Severn Bridge. The stub from Berkeley Road to Sharpness remains in occasional use in connection with nuclear traffic.

Before the bridge The first Severn Tunnel

Richard Wetherell, Roynon Jones the Younger, William and John Fendall and James Jelf were authorised by the Severn Tunnel Act 1810 (50 Geo. 3. c. cxxiv) to construct a road tunnel under the River Severn from a point about midway between Newnham Church and Bullo Pill to a point in the parish of Arlingham. The act, passed on 24 May 1810, incorporated the Severn Tunnel Company, with capital of £12,000. The Severn is 1,500 feet wide at the chosen point. A 12-horsepower engine was to drain the tunnel.

By August 1811 the construction was proceeding rapidly, and "with every prospect of success". However, when the construction had reached about halfway, an inundation took place at about four in the afternoon of Friday 13 November 1812. The flooding was considered to be impossible to overcome, and the project was abandoned.H W Paar, The Great Western Railway in Dean: A History of the Railways of the Forest of Dean: Part Two, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, second edition 1971,

The South Wales Railway

Early on proposals were implemented to connect south and south-west Wales to the growing railway network. The South Wales Railway was promoted, and opened its first sections of route in 1850 and 1851; on 19 July 1852 the Chepstow Bridge was opened and the line was continuous from near Gloucester to Swansea, and through running from London was possible. The line was constructed on the broad gauge, and was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In 1856 the SWR completed its line to Neyland, on Milford Haven; a ferry service was operated from Neyland to ports in the south of Ireland.

The South Wales Railway was absorbed by the Great Western Railway in 1863. Although the trunk line from Neyland and Swansea connected to the Great Western system, the heavy mineral traffic from South Wales was not greatly transferred to the line. Most of the valley railways were standard gauge, and the transfer to broad gauge wagons was heavily labour-intensive. Coal owners found it more convenient to continue to send their coal to the ports for onward transport by coastal shipping

Bristol and South Wales Union Railway

There was considerable demand for passenger journeys between Bristol and South Wales. Although the journeys could be accomplished by rail via Gloucester, this was a disproportionately circuitous route, and in 1863 the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway was opened, forming a direct railway line to a ferry pier at New Passage, near the present-day community of Severn Beach. A short spur was made on the Welsh side of the River Severn at Portskewett, connecting in to the South Wales Railway main line. In conjunction with the ferry, this made a more convenient passenger route between Bristol and South Wales.

Severn and Wye Railway

The Severn and Wye Railway had started life in 1810 as a plateway running from Lydney Docks to coal and iron ore workings in the Forest of Dean. After opening of the South Wales Railway through Lydney, the Severn and Wye Railway laid a broad gauge track alongside its plateway line from Lydney to Wimberry, a distance of about 3 miles. When the South Wales main line was converted to standard gauge, the S&WR branch was converted too.

Conversion of the gauge of the South Wales line The proliferation of standard gauge railways serving the South Wales mineral areas emphasised the inconvenience of the broad gauge on the former South Wales Railway lines. Whatever its technical merits, the discontinuity requiring transshipment of loads was a major commercial disadvantage. The Great Western Railway decided to convert the gauge of the SWR lines and its own lines connecting with them. This was done in a large scale operation in 1872, and in a short space of time the broad gauge had been eliminated on South Wales, enabling the GWR to develop mineral haulage from the area to London, West of England and South Coast destinations.

Sharpness docks

The Gloucester and Berkeley Canal, usually known later as the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, was built between 1798 and 1827, to give sea-going ships access to Gloucester. It was the first ship canal in Great Britain. There was a sea lock at Sharpness, on the eastern shore of the Severn. By 1870 the canal was inadequate for the ships of the day, which discharged at Sharpness, and required to bunker.T G Grey-Davies, Masterpieces of a Past Age, in the Railway Magazine, September 1967 In 1871 work was started on docks at Sharpness, as a convenient place to which larger sea-going shipping could be brought.W J Sivewright, Civil Engineering Heritage: Wales and Western England, Thomas Telford Limited, London, 1986, The Midland Railway was operating the main line between Bristol and Gloucester, and the Midland obtained authorisation for a branch line from Berkeley Road on that line to Sharpness.

Crossing the Severn The idea of a bridge over the River Severn had long been held. Brunel's first intention for the South Wales Railway was for the line to cross the Severn by bridge, at Hock Cliffe between Fretherne and Awre. This was strenuously opposed in Parliament in 1845 by interests in Gloucester, which strongly wished the line to pass through their city, and Brunel was obliged to take the line round through Gloucester.

In 1865 there was a sudden upsurge of interest in a bridge or tunnel; the bridge was proposed by the South Wales and Great Western Direct Railway, which proposed a line similar to the later Wootton Bassett – Badminton – Pilning line, but crossing the Severn from Oldbury Sand to Chepstow, a little north-east of the 1966 Severn Road Bridge. Because of shipping requirements at this location, the bridge had to be designed to give a high clearance over the water, and this proposal was known as the High Level Scheme. Two more groups proposed bridges further up river, near Newnham and at Hock Crib respectively.

Although these ideas gained considerable traction, all of them were withdrawn without any construction taking place.

In the latter half of 1871 a revival of interest took place, and six schemes for a Severn Railway Bridge were promoted. Some of them had ambitious connections to distant networks; the South Midland Railway would run from Lydney over the Severn to join the London and South Western Railway at Andover and Basingstoke.

Severn Bridge Railway Of the six schemes, it was the Severn Bridge Railway Bill (No. 2) that became the front runner. Its primary objective was to connect the growing Sharpness harbour with the mineral resources of the Forest of Dean. Lydney Harbour had long been outgrown, being limited to vessels of 400 tons. Sea-going vessels discharging at Sharpness or Gloucester had to move to Cardiff to bunker. As well as the internal export potential at Sharpness, the connection with the Midland Railway would give rail transit possibilities. A footway on the bridge would enable pedestrian use (but this was later omitted).

In addition it was held that the connection with the Great Western Railway, which had running powers over the Bristol line at Berkeley Road, would afford transit opportunities to the south-west of England, and shorten the GWR route from South Wales to London by 14 miles.Via Berkeley Road, reverse, and Bristol Temple Meads, reverse, compared with the GWR route via Gloucester.

The promoters relied on the traffic of the immediate district as the undoubted justification for the line, and believed that it alone would be quite adequate to provide a remunerative dividend on the cost of the undertaking; but at the same time they could not ignore the prospects of the exceptional returns which they believed would result from the accommodation of through traffic.

After several days in parliamentary committee, during which the bridge was modified to increase the span of the bridge sections so as to reduce the propensity to silt, the bill received royal assent as the (35 & 36 Vict. c. cix) on 18 July 1872. It was to build from Lydney, making junctions there with the GWR and the Severn and Wye Railway, to the planned Sharpness branch of the Midland Railway at Sharpness itself. The authorised capital was £225,000.

The previous month, on 27 June 1872, the Severn Tunnel Railway had been authorised to build from near Caldicot to near Pilning on the Bristol and South Wales Union line.

Getting subscriptions and construction

The estimated cost of construction of the Severn Bridge Railway was £227,973.The estimated cost of construction probably did not include land acquisition costs, and might not have included station construction, signalling, staff uniforms and accommodation, and company secretariat etc. The new company held its first shareholders' meeting on 31 August 1872. It was declared that amicable relations were intended with the Great Western Railway and the Midland Railway, but that the GWR had remained aloof. The hoped-for amicable relations of course meant financial support. The Midland Railway saw that the bridge would give them access to the Forest of Dean mineral sites, and agreed to subscribe £50,000. The GWR was supporting the newly authorised Severn Tunnel project; moreover the GWR had a monopoly of access to the Forest of Dean's mineral resources; that monopoly would be lost when the bridge was built.

The GWR challenged the Midland's subscription of £50,000 as being ultra vires, but arbitration led to its approval. The Gloucester and Berkeley Canal (later known as the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal,The Gloucester and Berkeley Canal had opened in 1827 and in 1872 had only just paid off a heavy and long-standing loan for its own construction works. subscribed £50,000 and the Severn and Wye Railway £25,000.

The bridge construction contract was let to the Hamilton Windsor Iron Works of LiverpoolHamilton's Windsor Ironworks at Grace's Guide in March 1875, in the amount of £190,000, and Vickers and Cook of London were awarded the railway works contract, valued at £90,000. T. E. Harrison was the engineer.