00:00We're just outside of the new Ashley Down station, where local residents and train enthusiasts
00:05have gathered this morning to celebrate the first train in 60 years to arrive at the station.
00:14The sheer number of people on the train and the sheer number of people on the platform
00:18when we got to Ashley Down shows people's excitement for trains. People have come with
00:25their children to show them the train arriving. It seems that people have made it an important
00:35aspect of the day, which is really encouraging. The thing that's most noticeable about today
00:42is you can go lots of places and there might be one age group, one demographic. We've got
00:49quite a wide age spectrum on this platform today. There's old people, there's young people,
00:55there's people in between. So it just proves that it is a station for everyone to use,
01:00I think, and a station that Bristol should be proud of.
01:04So first journey filled with lots of joy and excitement from lots of other enthusiasts.
01:08Of course lots of locals as well who came out quite early in the morning to catch the
01:12first train. Everything went smoothly. I don't think there were any delays, which is very
01:16good for Britain's railway. So I think it's a success, honestly. It's all gone very well
01:24and hopefully lots of people will use this station in the next few days and will benefit
01:32from the station.
01:33This station is brilliant. Even though it is a cookie cutter station, I've just spoken
01:38to someone from the design team and the challenges that were faced in the construction of this
01:45station were just... I think it's incredible that they managed to overcome all of this.
01:51It's nice to see that it is fully disability accessible and so on with lifts and stuff.
01:59So often you find stations that don't have that and there's also Braille signs as well
02:06on the stairs up. So it is quite an accessible station. It's quite a cookie cutter in design.
02:16So obviously it's lacking the character of the previous station, obviously because that
02:20was bulldozed. But a station's a station and I hope that for the local community it's very
02:25much beneficial since there's so many houses and stuff around here. I'm sure it'll be very
02:32well used.
Comments