EPW029346 ENGLAND (1929). Sharpness Docks, Sharpness, 1929

Flour mills

Floating grain elevator in dry dock with strange looking vessel between it and the casson

Train of wagons full of imported timber. There are more similar on the quayside.

Railway climbing and turning westwards towards the Severn Bridge.

Sharpness Station

The split level approach to the coal loader. Full wagons were pushed onto the higher level (some are standing there) where each wagon was separated from the train and rolled forward into the loader. Here it was tip up, with the coal being discharged through its end door. Once empty the wagon rolled back onto the lower level (the empty front line) to be coupled up to its neighbour and pulled away to be made into a train of empties. Much of the coal for transfer to water transport at Sharpness came from collieries in the Forest of Dean to the west of the River Severn. This method of handling coal, did much to retard the growth in use of more efficient railway vehicles for moving coal. Neither the pits nor the docks wished to invest in equipment that would make the loading and unloading quicker and would carry the same amount of coal in fewer larger railway vehicles. Nearly another 40 years would pass before such changes were made, but by then it was too late.

This range of brick buildings - granaries and warehouses - along the outer curve of the dock are very similar to those that survive today at the northern end of the canal in Gloucester.

start of the gloucester and sharpness canal

this railway line ran up to and over the old river severn railway bridge, hit by a boat in 1960 with the death of 5 people and demolished by 1970

tidal basin