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Oxfordshire’s Lost Railways by Peter Dale Soft Cover
Oxfordshires Lost Railways by Peter Dale
Soft Cover
48 pages
Copyright 2004
CONTENTS
Blenheim Branch
Fairford Branch
Great Central to Banbury
Kingham to Banbury
LNWR to Banbury
Oxford to Princes Risborough
Watlington Branch
Closed passenger stations on lines still open to passengers
INTRODUCTION
In railway terms Oxfordshire was dominated by the Great Western Railway. The first public railway in Oxfordshire was the part of the GWR main line between Reading and Steventon that entered the county near Goring and opened on 1 June 1840.
Early attempts to provide a railway to Oxford, branching from the GWR main line at Didcot were not successful and Oxford had to be content with the eight coaches a day that ran the 10 miles along the turnpike to and from Steventon. A bill passed in 1843 stipulated that the Oxford Railway, which ran to Oxford from a junction with the GWR at Didcot, should not carry any members of the University below the degrees of Master of Arts or Bachelor of Civil Law. The line opened on 12 June 1844.
North of Oxford there was considerable London & North Western Railway influence through the Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway. This was originally proposed as a broad gauge line to link those places and became part of the Gauge War between the Great Western on the one hand and the Midland and LNWR on the other. The OW&W (often known as the 'Old Worse & Worse'!) opened as a narrow gauge line and when the LNWR opened a short branch from its Oxford line to the OW&W at Yarnton on 1 April 1854, trains to and from Worcester and Wolverhampton were routed by the longer LNWR route via Bletchley. The OW&W became part of the West Midland Railway by amalgamation and that in turn was absorbed by the Great Western in August 1863. From the end of September that year Worcester and Wolverhampton trains went to Paddington instead of Euston.
The Great Central Railway, which had a line to Banbury, evolved from the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway when that company built its London extension and changed its name.
One other company's tracks could be seen in Oxfordshire: the line of the Stratford-upon-Avon & Midland Junction Railway (S&MJR) ran for about a mile in the northernmost corner of the county, between Fenny Compton and Byfield. The company's trains could also be seen at Banbury Merton Street.
It is worth adding a word of explanation here about the Grouping for non-railway enthusiasts. Many of the railways in Britain were built by small companies, sometimes with the backing of a larger company. In the years leading up to 1923 there was a process of consolidation by which smaller companies amalgamated or were absorbed by larger ones, but in 1922 there were still well over 100 different companies in Britain. In 1923 all but a few minor companies were grouped into four larger concerns by Act of Parliament. These were the Great Western Railway (which continued in an enlarged form), the Southern Railway, the London, Midland & Scottish
Railway (LMS - which included the LNWR and S&MJR), and the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER - which included the Great Central). These four companies - often referred to as the 'Big Four' - continued until nationalisation in 1948.
Under British Railways a Modernisation Plan introduced in 1955 spelled the beginning of the end for steam on Britain's railways, while the Beeching Plan of 1963 saw the start of widespread closures of many minor, and some major, lines. One line in Oxfordshire bucked the trend: the LNWR line to Oxford reopened on 11 May 1987 and the station at Islip reopened on 13 May 1989.
Oxford was an interesting railway centre because it was possible to see locomotives of all the Big Four companies there. Southern locos worked in on trains from places such as Bournemouth and LNER locos worked in from Leicester or Nottingham besides the GWR and LMS locos.
It is hoped this book will rekindle memories of a slower, bygone age when the station was the natural starting point for any kind of journey and perhaps some will seek out the preserved lines throughout the country where scenes similar to these pictures are recreated. The preserved Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway runs partly through Oxfordshire.
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