Wood Siding Railway Station - Services and Facilities

Services and Facilities

The station was positioned on the southern edge of Rushbeds Wood, a surviving part of the Bernwood Forest. It was on the western side of the level crossing over Kingswood Lane. Intended primarily for goods use, Wood Siding initially had no facilities for passengers, and the platform was simply a raised earth bank.

Despite the lack of passenger facilities, Wood Siding was the starting point for the first passenger service to operate on the line. On 26 August 1871 an excursion service ran from Wood Siding to London hauled by the Great Western Railway (GWR). It carried around 150 people, for a total of 1051⁄₂ passenger fares (with each child counted as half an adult), and was drawn by horses between Wood Siding and Quainton Road and by locomotive from Quainton Road to Aylesbury where the carriages were attached to the 7.30 am GWR service via Princes Risborough to London, arriving at 10.00 am. The experiment was not a success. Sharp overhanging branches along the route posed a danger to passengers and had to be cut back in the week before the excursion. The day itself was extremely rainy, and ticket sales were lower than expected. The return train from London to Quainton Road was delayed in Slough, and the excursion eventually arrived back at Wood Siding at 2.00 am.

In 1894 the crude stations on the Brill Tramway were rebuilt in anticipation of the extension to Oxford. While the other stations on the line were provided with buildings containing a booking office, waiting rooms and toilets, Wood Siding station was equipped with a small corrugated iron waiting room "with shelf and drawer" for passengers. A low passenger platform was also built. As well as the passenger platform, a short siding led to a raised wooden platform, alongside the through line to Brill, which served both as a buffer stop for the siding, and as a loading platform for milk. The station was staffed by a single porter, responsible for opening the gates of a nearby level crossing and for loading and unloading freight (mainly milk); a small, unheated hut was provided for his use. While the original Aveling & Porter locomotives were slow and noisy and could be heard by the porter long before their arrival, the more advanced locomotives introduced by the Metropolitan Railway were quieter and quicker; a ladder was installed against a large oak for the porter to watch for oncoming trains.

After the 1899 transfer of services to the Metropolitan Railway, the MR introduced a single Brown Marshall passenger carriage on the line; unlike other stations on the line, the platform height at Wood Siding was not raised at this time to accommodate the new carriage. From 1872 to 1894 the station was served by two passenger trains per day in each direction, and from 1895 to 1899 the number was increased to three per day. Following the 1899 transfer of services to the Metropolitan Railway, the station was served by four trains per day until closure in 1935.

Limited by poor quality locomotives and ungraded, cheaply laid track which followed the contours of the hills, and stopping at four intermediate stations between Wood Siding and Quainton Road to pick up and set down goods, passengers and livestock, trains ran very slowly. In 1887 trains took between 15 and 20 minutes to travel approximately one mile from Wood Siding to Brill, and a little over 1 hour 20 minutes from Wood Siding to the junction station with the main line at Quainton Road. Improvements to the line carried out at the time of the transfer to the Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad, and the use of the MR's better quality rolling stock, reduced the journey time from Wood Siding to Quainton Road to about 30 minutes.

In 1910 the new Bicester cut-off line of the Great Western Railway (GWR) Chiltern Main Line was routed directly through Wood Siding, although no interchange station was built. The GWR was to run in a cutting beneath the existing station; Wood Siding station and its siding were rebuilt at the GWR's expense between 1908 and 1910 to stand on a wide bridge above the GWR's line.

With trains travelling only marginally quicker than walking pace, and serving a lightly populated area, the stations at Wood Siding and Brill saw relatively little passenger use, and Wood Siding was removed from the passenger timetable by 1931, although trains continued to stop on request. In 1932, the last year of private operation, Brill and Wood Siding stations saw only 3,272 passenger journeys and raised only £191 (about £9,800 as of 2013) in passenger receipts.