Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station

Fantastic show walking the chains in the shed. Must be seen. Circus acts great music and story of the suspension bridge dramatised. Wonderful performances by young and older. Talent was amazing.

Die Hafenstadt Bristol im Westen Englands hat mehrere Bahnhöfe an der Great Western Mainline. Der ältere und wichtigere heißt Bristol Temple Meads — was so viel wie die «Tempelwiesen» sind — und befindet sich im Stadtteil Temple, ca. 15 Fußminuten südöstlich des Stadtzentrums. Das historische Gebäude gehört zum Werk von Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Bristol Temple Meads wird von First Great Western sowie der Deutschen Bahn angefahren. Ja, richtig, CrossCountry gehört zu Arriva und dies wiederum seit kurzem zur DB.
Ein Besuch dort ist eine Art Reise durch die britische Seele. Der gesamte Bahnhofsbereich ist mit Sicherheitshinweisen geschmückt. Man erfährt, wie viele Menschen letztes Jahr in diesem Bahnhof ausgerutscht sind und dass man doch aufpassen solle. Farbenfrohe Schilder erinnern daran, dass man doch bitte beim Treppensteigen nicht telefonieren solle — «A First Great Western safety initiative». Die meisten Durchsagen beginnen mit «This is Bristol Temple Meads», was wohl eigentlich offensichtlich sein sollte. («This is Bristol Temple Meads, Platform 5 is for the 20.35 CrossCountry service to…»)
Um den Bahnhof herum ist relativ wenig los. Die Bahnhofskneipe sowie verschiedene Food-​to-​go-​Stände befinden sich hinter der Ticketschranke. Ob es hier Bahnsteigkarten gibt?

A beautiful building, but too many trains are delayed for it to be a pleasnt experience. Almost every time (albeit infrequently) I use the station I have to wait for a delayed train.

This is a great station. It’s a fantastic piece of architecture but it’s modern with it. There are lifts from the platforms to the subway below, so people with pushchairs, wheelchairs and lots of luggage are able to easily make their way around.
There’s a small WH Smith which is very handy. The waffle shop beneath the platforms is absolutely amazing — I recommend having the ones with the melted chocolate, they’re divine!

It’s a very impressive railway station, the architecture well worth pausing to admire but with its many steps & long passageways is very awkward to get around if you have heavy luggage.

The best thing about Bristol Temple Meads is the waffle shop underneath the platforms!
The station building is a classic, with high roof and open space across the many platforms. There’s the usual WHSmith near the ticket barriers, handy for reading materials for the ongoing journey. Most importantly, in the past they’ve stocked the official West Ham magazine!
Outside, the taxi rank is constantly busy and the bus connections to other parts of Bristol and the surrounding area are pretty good. If in doubt, hop on a bus toward the centre or the main bus station. There’s also trains that service local rail stations, such as clifton down and redland for student types and weston super mare for good tacky seaside fun!

I commute and Temple Meads is like my second home. There are barriers to enter into the platforms and if there isn’t a queue at the ticket office there may be a bunch of people trying to get through in the entrance. Outside of the station there is a flower stall which also sells fruit. I’ve bought cheap but delicious cherries from there. There is a WH Smith outside of the barriers so if you want some reading buy it before you go into the station. There is an AMT coffee stall in the subway part but the best coffee is from Dashi. There is a cornwall pasty shop as well. The bar on platform 3 (the first platform you encounter when you walk in) is quite expensive and their food is usually stale. Good station but not much shopping.

This station makes you feel good arriving or departing from Bristol.
The building is great, architecturally.
Love travelling from here.

I first saw this station in the Bambi episode of The Young Ones (1980s sitcom about students) and thought the building was beautiful. Now that I use this station every once in awhile, I’ve come to appreciate the architecture even more.
The station has a few different platform areas, but all can be accessed via a lift if you have luggage, prams or have trouble walking or climbing stairs. The main station only has a WH Smith and a coffee stall, but the lower concourse to the various platforms has more options as well as one of the best sushi places in Bristol.
There are almost always a queue of taxis waiting to take you to your further destination, an airport bus, and the 8 and 9 busses which can take you into the centre and up to College Green, Park Street and Clifton for a little over a pound.

I love this station — when I used to live in Bristol arriving into the great arches of temple meads always made me smile. A grand entrance to a fantastic city. Makes another stations (like Birmingham New Street) totally shameful!

The outside of the railway station building is beautiful — the best of Victorian planning and architecture. However, the concourse inside is really small and gets really cramped and jostly during rush hour. Also you sometimes have to wait ages before being served at the ticket counter and the self service ticket boothes are not always working! The trains regularly seem to run late although not by too many minutes but they do have some good regular services and there are services to London Paddington and Waterloo although you’d probably be better off going to London from Bristol Parkway. You can take your bike on some of the trains but check first.

Not a very good train station at all, very few shops and cafes, also difficult to get to. If you wante to go sight seeing then its a lot better with beautiful 18^th century building and architecture.

Bristol Temple Meads is the Southwest regional/​national hub for rail transportation. The station offers services to London, Birmingham, the north and Scotland, aswell as services to Southampton, Taunton, Plymouth and Penzance. It’s a really nice and traditional station in the style of London Paddington, offering hassle free interconnections between your train and other services etc. Its also a short walk from central Bristol City Centre. The station has all the usual cafes etc, with obvious steep prices for that kind of location.

If you come to Bristol you cannot miss the beautiful station by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The architecture is magnificent. There is no need to travel further afield, we have everything here, Temple meads will keep you occupied for hours.
There is also a museum for you to look around. If you have time afterwards, just a couple of hundreds yards away, is St. Mary Redcliff Church. It is magnificent, not to be missed. You will be able to find it by just looking for the highest steeple.

This station holds many fond memories of catching to the train to see my girlfriend before we finally moved to Bristol together, in addition to all the pictures I’ve drawn sat around the station. Beyond this, the building is absolutely beautiful and built by one of the most influential engineers to ever grace history.
It’s an easy station to navigate with lots of screens to figure out where you need to be and when. There’s an advanced booking office to grab yourself a bargain and lots of fast ticket machines to make sure you’re not stood in one place for too long grinding your teeth!
There’s a choice of pasties, sushi, an AMT coffee stand, a few newsagents, a little café, a pub with hot food and staff that are always happy to let you sit indoors while you wait for your train. (Though it’s polite to ask before you do, for the record.)
The station is an iconical part of Bristol, and the story regarding the railway from here to london is incredibly interesting. (I’m no train enthusiast, but the Irish and peasant british communities that built the railway are great to read about, along with Brunel saving another mans life along the way and breaking his legs just when it was finished!)
This place holds some fond memories, and I’m glad its in my city.

Bristol Temple Meads Railways Station Opened in 1840 and still has eight platforms open for public access. Like most stations it provides a window in and out of the city with trains traveling right around the country. Upon entering, you feel like you have been transported back a hundred years, a beautiful station and for many the first and last thing they see while visiting Bristol.
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I use this station a lot for trips to London. It is probably one of the best looking stations in the UK and worth taking a moment to enjoy the architecture. It may help relax you if you have to face the oft delayed journey to London!

Too busy rushing for my train to appreciate the architecture etc but from what I have seen its impressive. Clean and well structured.

After the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station is probably Brunel’s greatest achievement in Bristol and is extremely impressive in its grandeur. The station itself isn’t that big and doesn’t really have much of an interior– just a ticket buying area and a WH Smith. But when you are catching your train, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’d been transported back to the 1920s. Temple Meads has been lovingly preserved over the years and the stone façade is reminiscent of how it would have been in the Brunel years. Adjoining the station is the Commonwealth museum, which is unfortunately soon to shut.

This well-​known station is the main City Centre station for Bristol, and one of the UK’s largest, handling over 6 million passengers a year. The distinctive name derives from a field or mead near a church known as the Temple.
The oldest part of the station is the original terminus of the famous Great Western Railway (GWR), built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and opened to Bath in 1840 and London in 1841. Fronted by an attractive Tudor-​style building, the station had two parallel platforms beneath a hammer-​beam roof. It is the oldest terminus station in the world, and appropriately Grade-​I listed.
The terminating platforms were extended to join up with the new through station in 1871, but these were closed in 1965. The original station is now a conference and exhibition centre, also housing the the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum. The later extension is used as a car park.
In 1841, another Brunel-​built railway, the Bristol and Exeter Railway, opened on an adjacent site, with a handsome stone terminus designed by S C Fripp in the Jacobean style. Trains initially ran to Bridgwater, and reached Exeter in 1844. Although the two termini were at right angles to each other, from the start there were through running lines on a sharp curve between them, and in 1871 a new through station was built to handle through trains. This was completed in 1878, and features the 500ft-​long curved roof so familiar to to-day’s passengers, with a castle-​like main building in the Tudor style and a distinctive, triangular forecourt. This is all listed at Grade I. The Bristol and Exeter terminus was closed when this new station was opened, and this attractive building is now used for offices.
The station today has 15 platforms, (all sharply curved) although there is no platform 14, (shades of Harry Potter!). Many of the platforms are, confusingly, numbered differently at either end (they are long enough to handle two trains at once so make sure you go to the right end, or you could have a long walk). There is a spacious underground subway linking the platforms, with a number of shops and food outlets. The station has all the facilities you’d expect for its size, including disabled access, lost property, bicycle storage, newsagent, and it is open and staffed 24 hours a day.
The train service is incredibly extensive, with trains running direct to most parts of the UK, from Penzance to Dundee, and Brighton to West Wales. Services to London, Birmingham and Cardiff run every 30 minutes throughout the day, while those to Southampton/​Portsmouth and to Exeter and Plymouth are hourly or better.
The only real gripe I have is that the ticket area is far too small. Although it has both a ticket office and self-​service machines, there are still long queues during peak periods. The other downer is the station’s location: It’s a good 10 – 15 minute walk to the City Centre, although there are frequent bus services and a taxi rank immediately in front of the station.