how transport got derailed

A few things I learned from:

Railways of Oxford
A transport hub that links Britain
by Laurence Waters
Pen & Sword 2020

The trouble with railways books is that they are mostly written by and for locomotive nerds and trainspotters, so I didn't read all of this book, skipped all the sections on "motive power", but still learned a few things about the developments that led to the dire situation we're in, without electric trains, and without a rail connection to most of the surrounding towns (Witney, Abingdon, Wallingford, etc.).

Waters starts at the very beginnings, when Oxford became the end of a branch line opened in 1844, with the first station located in Grandpont - not much left to be seen there. Even then the typical Oxford town and gown wrestling matches worked against the railways. The University objected to a transport system that might enable mere students to escape and visit other places to have fun. It eventually agreed on the concession that undergraduates were banned from using the trains and Great western had to police the ban. The University has also played an unfortunate role in preventing the introduction of electric trams in the early 20th century.

The later mess with two stations next door to each other is more widely known, especially as it left us with the Rewley Road swing bridge, for which guided tours are available during Open Doors weekends. The second station was on the plot where the Said Business School stands now.

Regarding the missing links to Oxfordshire's towns, it was new to me that Abingdon once had a branch line and a station closed in 1984. Apparently the station was demolished and replaced by a Waitrose supermarket soon after.

Judging by the bus schedules and daily traffic jams on the A40, the missing link that is producing the biggest share of our road traffic is the Witney branch line which was closed in 1970. What I learned about this one was that there had been a proposal to extend this line ending in Fairford westwards to Cheltenham, making it a valuable crosscountry connection that might have survived the Beeching cuts. The 1923 proposal would only have required 8 miles of extra track. Objections against the extension were raised by Great Western, for fear that the line might take away traffic from their existing services. I think that is the stupidest thing (of many) that happened to the railways around here. Branch lines ending in small places like Fairford (pop. 3,200) are economically challenging by default, but if the same small place is just one of the stations served between two bigger ones, the overlapping itineraries of people going to and from Oxford or to and from Cheltenham give a much more even usage, as anybody who has ever travelled longer distances on Germany's RE regional express trains will have noticed. Basically, Oxford to Cheltenham is an RE line that should be here now, but Great Western and Beeching conspired to kill it. (Funny that Beeching didn't make suggestions re which connections should be added to the network to make it more economically viable.) Every once in a while there is a proposal to rebuild the Witney line, but Waters considers it unlikely to happen.

Regarding recent passenger services, I learned that Oxford had cross country services to the south coast far beyond the one to Bournemouth we have now. There were also direct trains to Weymouth, Portsmouth, Brighton and Hastings, which were dropped in 2007.

So the strapline A transport hub that links Britain is bound to raise a sarcastic snigger from anybody who may be trying to travel anywhere other than London from here, but knowing what we've lost is important to inform strategic thinking about what may be reclaimed. The Chiltern Line to Marylebone has set a good example for what can be achieved.