The
Bristol and Exeter Railway opened workshops at Bath Road in January 1852. 35 locomotives were built in the workshops between 1859 and 1876. Part of the site was an engine shed with six tracks. It was rebuilt under the Loans and Guarantees Act (1929) in 1934 by the
Great Western Railway. The site's scale meant that although the depot was to be the major repair and maintenance point for the Bristol divisional area, the shed was restricted to a steel-frame straight 8-road with northernlight roof pattern form, as opposed to the GWR standard-pattern turntable model like
Old Oak Common. Secondly, as the depot was so close to
Bristol Temple Meads, it was required to keep the depot in full operation while construction took place. The twin-ramp coal stage was of standard GWR pattern but used concrete beams and brick piers to restrict ramp width. The divisional repair shop was to the far north of the site, close to the
River Avon. There were two standard-pattern over-girder turntables on site, one to the rear of the shed, and one to the northeast of the repair shop. While Bath Road handled passenger traffic locomotives,
St Philip's Marsh depot on the eastern throat handled freight types. Post nationalisation, under
British Railways both Bath Road (Code: BR) and St Philip's Marsh gained additional allocation from the closure of the local
London Midland and Scottish Railway sheds. By 1950 it had an allocation of 93 locomotives, half of them classic GWR 4-6-0s, and most of the others 2-6-2Ts for running local and regional passenger traffic. == Modern redevelopment ==