Kingham Railway Station - History

History

When the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway was extended from Evesham to Wolvercot Junction (north of Oxford) on 4 June 1853, there was no station between Adlestrop and Shipton. On 10 August 1855 a branch line to Chipping Norton was opened by the Chipping Norton Railway, and a station, known as Chipping Norton Junction, was opened at the junction of the branch with the OW&W; this branch was purchased by the OW&W in 1859. The OW&W amalgamated with other railways on 1 July 1860 to form the West Midland Railway; this in turn amalgamated with the Great Western Railway on 1 August 1863. In the meantime, a second branch line from Chipping Norton Junction, the Bourton-on-the-Water railway, had opened on 1 March 1862; that railway was absorbed by the GWR on 1 February 1874.

On 1 June 1881 the first section of the Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway was opened; this connected the Bourton-on-the-Water branch to the Cheltenham & Great Western Union line at Lansdown Junction, Cheltenham; and on 6 April 1887 a second section was opened, connecting the Chipping Norton branch to the Oxford and Rugby Railway at King's Sutton. The Great Western Railway took over the B&CDR on 1 July 1897, but for nearly twenty years, through trains running between Banbury and Cheltenham Spa St. James needed to reverse at Chipping Norton Junction.

The reversal was inconvenient for trains which did not need to call at Chipping Norton Junction, so for their benefit the GWR built a bridge to carry through trains between Banbury and Cheltenham over the Oxford and Worcester line; it opened to goods trains on 8 January 1906 and to passenger trains on 1 May 1906. The station was renamed Kingham on 1 May 1909.

Upon the opening of this new link, a new express train service began to use the line, including the new flyover, once a day in each direction. This train, unofficially known as the Ports to Ports Express, was a collaboration between the North Eastern Railway, the Great Central Railway and the GWR, which from 1 May 1906 ran between Newcastle and Cardiff Central via York, Sheffield Victoria, Leicester Central, Banbury, Gloucester and Newport; in August 1906 it was extended to serve Barry, via the Barry Railway; in July 1909 a through coach to and from Hull was introduced. It ran non-stop between Banbury and Cheltenham South and Leckhampton, but even so, took 82 minutes for this 44.75-mile (72.02 km) stretch. It was suspended during World War I, reinstated on 12 July 1919 and extended to Swansea in 1920; on the outbreak of war in September 1939, the service was again suspended, but when reintroduced in October 1946, it used a different route between Banbury and Newport.

In 1953, rationalisation was carried out which resulted in the closure of the East and West signal boxes and the singling of the line between them for working purposes. The remaining track between the boxes formed the base of a self-contained triangle for turning engines. By this time, the line to King's Sutton was only open for freight and a token passenger service operated to Chipping Norton.

British Railways withdrew passenger services from Kingham to Cheltenham and Chipping Norton in 1962 and freight services in 1964. British Rail designated the Oxford and Worcester line "The Cotswold Line". Passenger traffic has increased in the 1990s and 2000s.