WHILE it may have rejoiced in the grand title of the Banbury & Cheltenham Direct Railway, this thread of silver rails across north Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds was very much a backwater of the Great Western Railway.

A recently published book, in the Middleton Press Country Railway Routes series, takes a photographic journey along the line from east to west, recording its beginnings as branch lines from Kingham station, on the Cotswold Line, to Chipping Norton in the 1850s and to Bourton-on-the-Water, in Gloucestershire, in the 1860s.

It took until the 1880s for extensions to the branches to reach Banbury and Cheltenham, while direct running between the two towns only became possible from 1906, with the construction of an avoiding line crossing over the Cotswold Line just north of Kingham station.

While the route was used for some years by what was unofficially known as the Ports to Ports express, which linked South Wales and the North East, its bread and butter business was local passenger and freight traffic, along with heavy trains of ironstone on their way from the quarries in north Oxfordshire to the steelworks of South Wales.

The rise of the car and lorry, along with the growth in deliveries of high-grade iron ore from overseas, saw traffic dwindle after the Second World War.

Passenger trains on the lightly-used section between Chipping Norton and Banbury were first to be withdrawn in 1951.

Goods traffic continued, but a landslip west of Hook Norton in August 1958 blocked the line and it was decided not to clear it, with Hook Norton served from Banbury and Chipping Norton and the nearby Rollright siding from Kingham.

Passenger trains between Kingham and Chipping Norton and Kingham and Cheltenham were next to succumb, in 1962, with the western part of the line’s remaining freight services, from Kingham to Chipping Norton and Bourton-on-the-Water, ending in September 1964.

At the eastern end of the route, goods traffic to Hook Norton ended in November 1963, but the section from the main line junction at Kings Sutton to Adderbury lingered until August 1969, when traffic from the private siding of J Bibby Agriculture ceased.

  • Banbury to Cheltenham via Chipping Norton, by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith, is published by Middleton Press, priced £15.95, including post and packing.

It can be ordered online from the publisher's website or by calling 01730 813169.