Just outside Coleford, Perrygrove railway offers a ride on a narrow-gauge railway and more…read more On entry we were greeted by friendly staff who explained the timetable and handed out a quiz sheet to each of our children together with a key that opens the appropriate prize box once you've finished. The aim of our time at the place was to explore the whole site finding shapes and pictures to answer the clues on the sheet. They provided two different sets of questions, depending on whether you want to just take the train or wish to wander through the wooded area. Next to the entrance there's a miniature 'village' inside that the kids can explore. There's a reasonable amount of scope for them to play hide-and-seek, crawl and run about, spy on Mum and Dad sitting in the cafe and invent other games to play. The railway journey takes you to the top of a hill and you have plenty to look out for on the way. There are a several places where you can get off and explore and there's no limit to how long you spend doing so; you can get on and off as much as you like. At the to of the hill there's a small covered childrens playframe built to a very high standard. From here a series of narrow paths lead down through the wooded area back to the main 'station' at the entrance. I'd suggest that if you have a pushchair, you might struggle pushing it along these paths unless it is one that has large wheels. Once you've finished wandering about outside collecting answers to the questions on the quiz, you return to the main building and enter a miniature 'village' to find your prize. The prizes are obtained by identifying the correct locker to open with your key. Inside you'll find some sweets and some 'party-bag' gifts. The cafe provides basic hot and cold drinks, sandwiches and simple heated-up food. There was also a small selection of items for sale; postcards, toy trains etc. It is spacious and you can just about see the trains coming and going. Prices were reasonable. We found Perrygrove a good place to spend a 2-3 hours and a good choice on a rainy day as well as with good weather.

Brilliant station with such kind staff especially Lead man in customer services called Darren who…read morewas so helpful with laptop related disasters

A nice little station with only four platforms. It is the main station in Herefordshire. The staff…read moreare generally friendly. The cafe is nice, and, suprisingly, quite cheap.

The Northern end of the Severn Valley Railway nestles below castle hill with its tilting Castle…read moretower keep which leans further than the Tower of Pisa all as a consequence of Cromwell forces not using sufficient gunpowder trying to blow it up . The station itself is a bustling terminus of the steam railway taking you back to the heyday of steam trains . It hosts a great pub serving lovely real ales a great place to relax on a cold winters day with its open fires . There's the engine maintenance sheds to see too on special events .

Bristol Parkway station is located at the intersection of the lines from London (Paddington) to…read moreSouth Wales and the main line from Bristol to Birmingham, providing a major interchange between the two. It was one of the first 'Parkway' stations to be built, in 1972, to attract car users to trains by providing ample car parking at locations with good road links, close to urban areas. This site was chosen both because of the interchange it offered, and because of its proximity to the M4 and M32, just north of Bristol. When opened, shelter was fairly meagre, with 'bus stop' shelters on the platforms and a small waiting room and ticket office by the entrance to the car park. Because of its exposed and windy position, additional long platform shelters were erected, but it still had a reputation for being a cold place to wait for a train. Over the years, substantial suburbs have developed around Stoke Gifford, and in 2001, a new and much larger station building, with a dramatic curved roofline, was built in recognition of its growing importance. In 2007 an additional platform was constructed on the London-bound (north) side, to provide additional capacity. The station is now used by over 1.75 million passengers a year, with in excess of half a million passengers changing trains here. The station now has heated waiting shelters on the platforms, and the main building has a small shop, cafe and ticket office. Other facilities include a taxi rank, payphones, cash points and bus stops for local bus services (including to Frenchay hospital and Bristol city centre). The station has level access (via lifts to the platforms). The station is served by all long distance trains on the London-South Wales main line and the cross-Country main line from the South-West to Birmingham and the North. It is also served by local services from Gloucester, Westbury and Weston-super-Mare.

This is a great, modern, functional station on the North side of Bristol. It's close to the M4/M5…read moreintersection, so it's a far better place to collect someone from than Bristol Temple Meads (in the centre of the city) if you're located to the north of the city. However, there are a few things to be aware of: 1. Parking is £5 a day. The payment meters are awkward to operate, and if you don't pay you will get clamped & fined. 2. The car park gets full by 9:30am most days, and if you park outside an official space, you will get clamped (even if you've paid for a ticket). 3. Traffic in the area is hellish at peak hours. Journeys from the motorway to the station can take in excess of 45 mins between 7:30 - 9:00 and 16:00 - 18:00 for the 2 mile journey. The station is fairly new with good facilities: clean toilets, a small newsagent, a coffee shop and a sandwich shop. There are also lifts to all platforms for the disabled.

A small station with a fast main line service to London and the west of England. It has trains to…read moreWeymouth and Bristol so is an interchange. There is a ticket office and excellent toutist information is displayed in the waiting room.There is a coffee kiosk and taxis ard available here. It serves a wide area of south Somerset and there is a car park.

Not as elderly as the Oldport…read more This is a large and fancy station in Newport with a beautiful space-age bridge and corridors connecting to the older buildings. It's very strange but also very nice. It looks like a pair of headphones or something - it's quite odd. But somehow beautiful. It's the third busiest station in Wales because it's in the Cardiff area, and it's been operating since 1850. You can actually go directly from here to Manchester, or all the way up to Holyhead, and Nottingham, and Birmingham, and various other major cities - and Portsmouth and Brighton and so on. The new Concourse was opened in 2010 and is space-age and beautiful. Some people have criticized it as being one of the ugliest buildings ever, but hey, it really adds something unmistakable in Newport.

Opened in 1850, Newport is (in 2019-20) the second busiest station in Wales after Cardiff Central…read more The station is situated close to the remains of Newport Castle near the River Usk. The station has gone through several rebuildings in its history, and until 2009 the main terminal building was the large brick office block with classical detailing, built in 1923 by the then Great Western Railway, on the south side of the station, close to the castle. In 2007 a new platform 4 was added on the north side of the station, and in 2009 a new entrance and concourse and a second bridge was built in preparation for the 2010 Ryder Cup, being held nearby. This provided new car parking facilities, a new concourse and taxi/drop off point on the south side, and a new passenger entrance on the north side. The old concourse and entrance in the 1923 building was then closed. The design of the new concourse and bridge has attracted some criticism, on grounds of aesthetics (it was nominated for the 2011 "Carbuncle Cup" for the ugliest building of the year), because it is further from the town centre than the old building, and because it has suffered from intermittent problems with rainwater leaking onto the concourse and stairs. It is also much smaller than the original building and can get congested. On the plus side, the developments have made all platforms accessible by lifts. Current regular services (pre-Covid) are based on 2 trains per hour to/from London, and hourly services to each of Portsmouth via Bristol, Taunton via Bristol, Nottingham via Birmingham, Manchester Piccadilly via Bristol Parkway, Manchester via Hereford and Crewe, and Cheltenham via Gloucester. All trains going west head stop at Cardiff, with hourly onward services to Swansea, Carmarthen and Maesteg. Some of the Carmarthen services are extended to Milford Haven. Occasional direct services also run to Brighton and Tenby. The station has a small cafe, newsagent/bookshop, toilets (accessible and with baby changing facilities) and a booking office. There is no cash machine. There are covered bicycle spaces, a taxi rank, and two nearby car parks. A handful of Newport Bus services also stop at the station.

As the name implies, this serves the well-known Somerset holiday resort of Weston-super-Mare…read more The station itself is on a loop off the main Bristol-Taunton-Exeter main line, thanks to the backward nature of its residents in the 1840s, who resisted proposals for the route of the original main line to run closer to the town. Instead, on 14 June 1841, Weston was connected to the main line by a branch, just over a mile long, and worked initially by horse-drawn carriages. Horse traction remained until 1851, by which time the town had begun to regret being on the end of a branch. This was rectified in 1884 with the construction of the present loop and a handsome station built in the local stone, with large glass canopies over two through platforms and a bay platform. A separate station for summer excursion trains was built just to the north, but closed in 1964. The loop line was singled in 1972, which has since become something of a bottleneck. The station now has a regular service of trains from Weston to Bristol Parkway and from Taunton to Cardiff, providing a half-hourly service to Bristol and an hourly service south to Taunton. This is supplemented by a handful of trains to and from London, and a small number of Cross-Country trains from Plymouth or Paignton to Newcastle. Cross-Country would like to operate more services to Weston, but the timetable is constrained by the single track. The station buffet has been turned into a pub, named 'Off the Rails', known for its changing selection of real ales and cider, and it also does food. There are entrances both to the station approach and the platform, so it's easy to pop in for a pint while you are waiting! The station has level access throughout, a taxi rank, cycle storage and a large car park. Regular buses call here for other parts of the town and surrounding villages: details on http://www.travelinesw.com .

The staff are always helpful, which is painfully necessary when you have a pushchair, need to cross…read morethe bridge to the second platform and there are stairs and no lift. The station is clean and has a decent sized waiting room. Both platforms are covered so no waiting in the rain.

Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. But at least you can see the Trefforest, the…read morerailway station that is. This is a little station in a little village which is 18 miles to the northwest of the city center of Cardiff. It's close to the campus of University of South Wales, so it is very much a student station, and is little and useful and definitely efficient. They adapted the spelling to change it to the Welsh spelling in 1980, which makes total sense and I agree with it. It has bilingual signage which is pretty awesome. All in all, it's a good one, I've been to about 100 stations across Wales in recent years and this is one of the better ones.

Not a huge fan of this train station to be honest. It does the job and isn't downright horrible,…read morebut without a doubt dated and in need of a good scrub. ~ Location: Treforest in general is a really beautiful and scenic location with plenty of lovely greenery, which the train station is surrounded by. Unfortunately, there's not much nearby besides the university and a few local pubs. ~ Atmosphere: Where Trefforest Railway Station falls short, for me. Like I mentioned, it's very dated. The station itself is extremely tiny with a small ticketing office and that's pretty much it. It's very dirty as well seeing as how it's constantly filled with university students coming and going, but very little maintenance to keep up with cleanliness or appearances. There are 2 platforms at this station, with a walkway going over the tracks to connect the 2. ~ Customer Service: Because there's about 1 staff member at this station (at the ticketing booth), if the booth is closed I really hope you know how to manage which train to catch. Personally though, I've never actually gone to the ticketing booth to comment on the helpfulness of the staff. ~ Service Frequency: From what I can tell, trains coming to and from Trefforest Railway Station isn't too rare. However, one thing that I dislike are that the trains on this route are always the crappy, tiny old ones. I guess you have to use dated trains to match the dated railway station. Also, the tracks are a bit too close for comfort as with every passing train, it's absolutely terrifying loud (more than normal on most routes) and you feel like you've just been barely grazed. When a freight train came around, I'm ashamed to say that I jumped a bit. --- Overall, Trefforest Railway Station definitely does its job in providing service to and from Trefforest. There's enough trains coming through that you shouldn't have to wait too long before your next one but it's really truly in dire need of some TLC.

Taffs Well station lies between Radyr and Treforest Estate on the Valley's Line. Should you find…read moreyourself waiting idly for a train then at least you have a scenic view of the Garth Mountain. There's parking so good for park and ride into Cardiff centre (they've recently built another little car park across the road). You can access the station either from the car park on the east side or from Taffs Well village on the west by walking up the alleyway by John Mills the newsagents. There's a ticket man or lady there from about 7.30 to 9.30 weekday mornings, or you can buy a ticket on the train, mostly. Sometimes you end up in the unpaid fares queue at Cardiff Central if the conductor never turns up. There's live departure and arrival boards at the station or on the website.