Cinderford's Linear Park, and a Cornish connexion

Cinderford's Linear Park is well known to residents of the Forest of Dean. It follows the course of the old Newnham - Cinderford branch line, which served some of the most important collieries in the area.  This walk follows the branch line, together with a track of the old Severn & Wye Railway.

Here I am at the beginning of the Linear Park, waiting for a train at Ruspridge Halt – a train that will never come.  The last one departed in 1958. The original station name board outlived the railway by many years, but mysteriously 'disappeared' about 5 years ago. The new one, as you'll see, isn't weathering too well.

I copied this map of the area's old railways from Jowett's Railway Atlas. The path follows the green line, running north from Ruspidge Halt, branches left just before the red line, and ends near the area marked as Churchway.

This model of a Great Western pannier tank and a couple of wagons has obviously seen better days. That's a shame and it surely deserves to be restored. Modellers will appreciate the time and effort that went into it.  

The Linear Park is becoming a wildlife and conservation area of some repute. Personally, I find it hard to work up tremendous enthusiasm for boggy marshes and ponds, though I imagine that a host of birds, small animals and creepy-crawlies will find them wonderful.  I must return in the Spring.

One line (indeed, one of many) that isn't shown on the Jowett map is the Crump Meadow Colliery Tramway. It crossed the Cinderford Branch here, on Letcher's Bridge... and now I have my Corish connexion. 

Click the map to enlarge it.

Edwin Marcus Letcher was born in Cornwall in 1816. He became the Bilson Staion Master and must have been quite a guy, for the nearby tramway bridge soon bore his name. A Google search revealed that his name also appears as secretary and collector of Cinderford Market Hall, secretary to the Bilson Gas Light & Coke Co, and that he went on to become the Great Western Railway's goods manager at Cinderford. 

Since moving to the Forest of Dean I've discovered several Cornish connexions. As the prosperity of Cornish copper and tin mines rose and slumped, then slumped still further, many mining families must have been drawn to the Forest in search of more secure employment. 

On with the walk. At Bilson North Junction (see first map) we joined the 'red' Severn & Wye Railway and headed up Bilson North Loop towards Drybrook Road Station.

Look closely at this photo and you'll hopefully be able to make out an old platform edge. This is all that remains of Cinderford's first railway station. If the Dean Forest Railway ever realise their ambitions, this may become their northern terminus.

In the best traditions of stations named 'road', Drybrook Road Station was nowhere near Drybrook, and accessible only on rough forest tracks. I'm told that it only really existed as a place for trains from Lydney to reverse on their way to Lydbrook Junction.  Here's little me on a winter's day in 2014, wondering when the next train might arrive. The last one left in 1929. 

Before heading back to Ruspidge and civilisation, we made our way on forest tracks and part of the Wysis Way to the northern end of the Linear Park and Steam Mills Lake.

I searched the Internet in vain for the origin of this rather lovely lake. There were no previous workings here in coal mining days, so I presume that it was excavated simply to enhance the area and provide sport for local anglers. Rather lovely, really. The building on the far side is the new Cinderford Campus of Gloucester College.  What a long name!  In my day it would probably have been called Cinderford Tech.