The 'Badminton Line' is sometimes mistaken as a sleepy GWR branch line, but in fact its origin and current operation is as a route connecting the new Severn Tunnel, thus South Wales, directly to London and skirting central Bristol and the route through Temple Meads and Bath. However when built just after 1900, it was equipped with an array of stations serving the sometimes very minor locations along the route. One of these was the eponymous estate at Badminton.

This 1988 book focuses on the construction of the line and these initial stations. The civil engineering was quite problematic for a short line, particularly the amount of water to be dealt with, and this is well described. The stations are also described in good detail and well illustrated with both photographs and drawings of their layout and buildings.

Although always an important route, the stations never had much local traffic and so became casualties in the Beeching era. The important marshalling yard of Stoke Gifford, North of Bristol, also closed in 1971 and its site became a whole new station, the increasingly large and busy Bristol Parkway.

A good book and an enjoyable read on this important, interesting but now largely overlooked line. However its age is a limitation and so much has happened there since. Readers would also enjoy P. D. Rendall's The South Wales Direct Line: history and working, which gives a more operational description of the line in the BR and later era. ( )