Wood Siding railway station was a halt in Bernwood Forest, Buckinghamshire, England. It opened in 1871 as a terminus of a short horse-drawn tramway built to assist the transport of goods from and around the Duke of Buckingham’s estates. In 1872, a lobbying campaign by residents of the town of Brill led to the tramway being converted for passenger use. The railway was cheaply built, ungraded, and used poor quality locomotives; services were very slow, initially limited to a speed of 5 miles per hour.
About Wood Siding railway station in brief
Wood Siding railway station was a halt in Bernwood Forest, Buckinghamshire, England. It opened in 1871 as a terminus of a short horse-drawn tramway built to assist the transport of goods from and around the Duke of Buckingham’s estates. In 1872, a lobbying campaign by residents of the town of Brill led to the tramway being converted for passenger use and extended a short distance beyond Wood Siding to Brill railway station. The railway was cheaply built, ungraded, and used poor quality locomotives; services were very slow, initially limited to a speed of 5 miles per hour. Between 1908 and 1910 the station was completely rebuilt on a bridge over the newly built Chiltern Main Line of the Great Western Railway, which passed directly beneath the station. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership and became the Metropolitan line of London Transport. The station was closed, along with the rest of the line, from 30 November 1935. All infrastructure associated with the station were removed in 1936; the remains of the bridge which supported the station are still in place. The track and stations remained in the ownership of the Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad Company; the MR had an option to purchase the line but never took up the option. The line was never taken up by the MR, and from 1 December 1899 the MR operated all services on the line on the MR’s own track and from the MR on the Brill Tramway.
The Duke had long had an interest in railways, and had served as Chairman of the London and North Western Railway from 1852 to 1861. In the early 1870s he decided to build a light railway to carry freight from his estates in Buckinghamshire to the A&BR’s line at Quainton Road. Because the proposed line ran on land owned by the Winwood Charity Trust, who consented to its construction, the line did not need Parliamentary approval and construction could begin immediately. On 1 September 1894 London’s Metropolitan Railway reached Aylesburys, and shortly afterwards connected with the A &BR line, with local MR services running to Verney Junction from 1 April 1894. Two mixed trains ran each day in each direction, and the line was renamed the Brill tramway. It was planned to extend the line to Oxford, but the scheme was abandoned in the 1890s. In 1889 the trustees of the Duke’s estate set up the Oxford Tram Road Company with the intention of extending the line from Brill to Oxford. Despite being an extremely poor route, it would have been the shortest route between Oxford and the City of London.
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This page is based on the article Wood Siding railway station published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 12, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
