IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Station Road, COLEFORD, GL16 7LJ

The 20 metre long wooden building is on the south side of Station Road. It was originally an army hut dating from 1926. The building contains a hall with a capacity of 70 and one meeting room.

The track is on the east side of the hall.http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3260682 A notice stapled to the wooden wall informs you that you are now entering land owned by Milkwall & District Recreational Hall. Please pick up after your dog and leave the area clean.

Coaches for hire in Station Road.

Viewed from the Station Road end. In the middle distance, posts mark the location of a cattle grid across the road. Primrose Drive is a cul-de-sac with branches to four short cul-de-sacs, Bluebell Close, Clover Close, Foxglove Way and Bramble Road.

Premises of Brian J.Aston coach and bus hire.

Stepbridge Van Sales & vehicle services is located in Nash & Cox Yard on the north side of Station Road.

Viewed across Station Road. The name on the board on the right is P J Engineering.

The road in the background used to cross the railway on a girder bridge, demolished some time in the 1970s after the line closed. Milkwall station platform, complete with rather ugly brick building (a replacement for the original wooden station building which was unpopular with passengers and which mysteriously "went on fire" in 1923 ... oddly, a similar fate had befallen the equally unpopular wooden station building at Coleford five years earlier) was where the fence is now. This was also the site of the junction for the Sling branch which was under a mile long and served Fred Watkins' engineering works at Sling.

The Severn & Wye Joint Railway's Coleford branch - now a footpath and cycle track - ran from left to right towards Coleford. In the centre of the photo, where the wooden fence is, was Milkwall station, which lost its passenger service with the rest of the S&WJR system in 1929. Threading through the industrial buildings in the background was the Sling branch, which was under a mile long and was converted from a tramway in 1876 by the S&WJR using money loaned to them by W. H. Fryer, a local ironworks owner, on the understanding that until the loan was repaid his traffic would be carried for free or at reduced rates. The last train ran on the Sling branch on December 31st 1965, although it was only officially closed with the Coleford line in August 1967. Information in this caption is mostly from Neil Parkhouse's excellent book "Forest of Dean Lines and the Severn Bridge" from the "British Railway History in Colour" series. The book also contains a 1965 photo taken from the same viewpoint as my picture.

Viewed from the location of the former Milkwall railway station on the Severn & Wye Railway. The station opened in 1853. Passenger services ceased here in 1929. Station House http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3260824 is on the left.