Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast, which is a special edition coming to you from, well, the underpass at Bristol Temple Meads station.

And that's because it is a really important station on the Great Britain Rail Network, but it's also a fascinating place in its own right.

And what I particularly like about it is that they celebrate their heritage with a really

quite interesting display.

If you come down from the main barriers into the underpass, which you have to do for almost every train,

particularly the ones if you are travelling to London, they're always at the far end,

then you actually walk through this, but please allow yourself a little bit of time

to find out more about this. And of course it's the story of a line that was devised by the great

Isimbab Kingdom Brunel, who was I think appointed in 1833 to build a line, a railway line

from London to Bristol. It took seven years which actually compared with HS2 for

example isn't at all bad. And it opened in 1840.

Originally, the buildings of Bristol Station were actually just slightly to the side. I'll wander up

there and talk you through them. But then gradually, and of course

it was a broad gauge because good old Brunel loved nothing more than nice wide tracks. Eventually

there were other companies that were coming in and they brought in their

standard gauge and of course everything is standard gauge now.

The station as you look at it and it's coming up the stairs is huge and vast, a bit of scaffolding

which is making it difficult to see the wonderful curve of the roof.

It is a very gracious station and it was remodelled around about 1870 in order to cope with all the extra traffic and that very loud noise is a reminder

of course that electrification still hasn't come here it's an absolute disgrace there was a

huge plan to electrify the Great Western Railway.

It got really as far as the other side of Bath and then they gave up and said,

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