All photos courtesy of Rob Coles!
The new safety fencing being installed beside the main rail track running through Sydney Gardens is presenting one of our regular contributors with problems.
Let’s hear from Rob Coles:
“The Belmond British Pullman, formally Orient Express, visited Bath again on Wednesday. You can just about see the gleaming diesel locomotive through the Sydney Gardens railings.
The locomotive named the Queen’s Messenger hauls the Royal Train. It has E II R on the side, together with a plaque recording its status, and DB on the front to show it is operated by Deutch Bahn.
The gardens have another Royal connection. a temporary platform was constructed to allow the Duke and Duchess of Connaught to alight there. He was the third son of Queen Victoria. Forty-odd feet of balustrade was removed for the erection of the temporary structure. No health and safety then.
The Sydney Gardens balustrade looks wonderful but the railings on top, no matter how well made, are far far too high and too close together. No longer will people come from afar to watch, wonder and photograph the trains. It will be impossible to see and take photographs like the attached.
Nor would ‘Mr Brunel’ be able to greet his trains as he did on the 200th anniversary of his birth. What would his granddaughter think, perhaps she would have suggested the plaque to Isambard that she unveiled should be removed.
The plaque is on the wall of the road bridge at the Bath end of the gardens. It is now in hiding, hard to see because of bushes.”
You can please some of the people …