The Portishead Railway is a branch line railway running from Portishead in North Somerset to the main line immediately west of Bristol, England. It was constructed by the Bristol & Portishead Pier and Railway Company, but it was always operated by its main line neighbour, and was more usually thought of as the Portishead branch or the Portishead railway. It opened as a broad gauge () line to connect new docks at Portbury, at the west side of the mouth of the River Avon, with the railway network. The line opened to Portishead in 1867, and to the docks in 1879. The docks were always overshadowed by Bristol and Avonmouth docks. The ordinary passenger service declined in the twentieth century, leading to closure to passengers in 1964, and to all traffic in 1981. When a new high capacity freight terminal was opened at the site of the Royal Portbury Dock, the line as far as that point was reopened to accommodate the new traffic, in 2002. Public consultation took place in 2015 regarding the reopening of the entire line to passenger traffic in 2020, as part of the MetroWest proposals. By 2020, the line was scheduled to reopen in December 2024. History Getting authorisation In the 17th and 18th centuries, Bristol harbour had been paramount as the focus of international trade with the New World. However the city centre location, and the difficult tidal negotiation of the Avon valley, was increasingly a constraint on development, particularly as larger vessels came into use. A number of schemes were put forward without success, but in 1846 the Portbury Pier and Railway Company obtained parliamentary authority to build a floating pier near Portbury, on the west side of the Avon near its mouth, and a railway to connect it to Bristol. Isambard Kingdom Brunel had proposed the development, and the railway was to be operated on the atmospheric principle, in which trains were propelled by a piston in a tube between the rails, from which the air ahead of the train had been exhausted by stationary steam engines. At this time the collapse of investor confidence following the period of railway mania was taking effect, therefore finance for the work could not be raised and the new company was dissolved. In 1849 a small stone pier was built at Portishead, and packet steamers unloaded passengers there from that time; but this did little