Being a resident of the Limpley Stoke area I was reading the most recent parish council meeting minutes and saw this:

Unitary Councillor for Winsley and Westwood Report- Mr Nigel White (NW) 
 
NW is still in discussion with Network Rail, Wiltshire Highways and
National Highways regarding the railway bridge problems. Signage on
the A36 needs to be bigger as vegetation is covering the very small
HGV warning sign.

Hopefully if enough people raise the issue with Network Rail they may act.

 
Thanks for this, you've motivated me to log this with Network Rail as the entire location needs a visit followed by an intervention.

As for the road verges, county boundaries in that part of the world are bananas - probably reflecting some terrible battles or other... and the location's actually in Wiltshire so I've logged it with them too.

Mark

 

Poor approach signage at western (A36) side.   

Never a problem other way as there is warning just before roundabout before Winsley village, and good visibility of the bridge itself that side.

Basically traffic heading north on A36 approaches Limpley Stoke (road) viaduct and is faced with a sign saying 7.5t if turn left, 18t if carry on along A36, or turn right (with no warning of low bridge).

There is then a warning sign, under multiple other signs just before a narrower stone bridge on a corner.  Needless to say virtually impossible to read that far if driving and watching the corner.

Then road runs alongside the railway, this bit had the former Camerton branch, but is now just vegetation overhanging the road.  Network Rail could easily erect a warning sign facing the road on their land (but haven't).   

Because Network Rail haven't cut the vegetation (and this is where a track was lifted, so quite a few metres from live railway), and allowed it to protrude into the road, it cuts the sightlines of the warning signs on the bridge to about 10-15m before the bridge.  The road does sharp corner under the bridge.

There used to be extra deck span for branch track, the concrete pads and different brickwork are clearly visible.  It would be easy to install a physical beam in this area (but again hasn't been done, because presumably bridge hasn't been hit enough yet to justify it)

Sort of smacks of safety of bridge being deemed less than cost of extra signs, and a vegetation crew with a battery hedge trimmer to cut the obscuring the warning signs vegetation etc.  Cost first, safety second.

 

Welcome to the Coffee Shop forum, chipbury, and thank you for your first post.

Yes, that poor bridge in our local area must have a claim to being the unluckiest.

CfN. 

 
The fact GWR arent stopping other westbound services at oldfield park and Keynsham this afternoon is madness. The official advice is to double back via Bath. Which would be great if half of those weren't disrupted too.

Thankfully I dont go to the office much these days but when I did GWR were pretty good at adding stop notices  at Keynsham when the normal stopping services had issues. Whats changed?

 
The vegetation was very lush on the bridge approach even a few weeks ago, and has probably not been trimmed. More could be done there to make the structure scream 'Low bridge'.

(Though we'll be well aware from the Ely-tractor debacle that nothing sort of a tazer-equipped drivers seat will help if someone's really not looking...)

Mark

 
I think this is the 5th or 6th time the bridge has been hit this year!

 

Noticing tickets not valid on D1x - is that because of the Manvers Street closure in Bath meaning it's not serving the station there?