Avon Valley Railway

The Avon Valley Railway is a 3-mile standard-gauge heritage railway running through the Avon valley in South Gloucestershire between Bitton (the headquarters and primary station) and Oldland Common to the east and Avon Riverside to the west, on the former Midland Railway Mangotsfield to Bath Green Park line — a route whose closure in 1966 also ended through services on the famous Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway.

The Bristol Suburban Railway Society was formed in 1972, and after nearly two decades of patient work the first preserved trains ran in 1991. The line's location immediately beside the Bristol and Bath Railway Path — a popular National Cycle Network route using the rest of the closed Midland trackbed — gives the railway a constant stream of passing visitors and makes combined cycling-and-steam visits an obvious attraction. The railway path connects Bristol and Bath through the same Avon valley that the Midland Railway once served, and the contrast between the busy modern leisure route and the restored heritage railway at Bitton illustrates both the line's loss and its partial recovery.

Bitton station has been carefully restored to represent the Midland Railway's characteristic style, with red-brick station buildings and the atmosphere of a quiet country junction. The railway hosts a varied programme of events through the year and maintains a collection of steam and diesel locomotives representative of the types that once worked the Midland's West of England routes.