Shortlands in 1988

SHORTLANDS

(All 9.8.1988 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

SOUTHERN REGION SCENE - 1980s

After many years of what seemed, at the time, a dull procession of blue and blue and grey, with little new on the scene, the end of the 80s saw big changes on the old Southern Region as it morphed into Network SouthEast.

Liveries began to change and new trains started to appear.

An hour or so at Shortlands in 1988 caught this process under way as Network SouthEast livery started appearing, along with class 319 units amongst the old slam door stock. In fact from these pics blue and grey may never have existed!

Upper Warlingham 16.8.1988

UPPER WARLINGHAM

(All 16.8.1988 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

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Three snatched shots at Upper Warlingham on 16 August 1988 showing the station and an NSE liveried unit number 1266 on an East Grinstead train. 

Upper Warlingham Station

Upper Warlingham station is on the Oxted line and is one of three stations that serve Whyeleafe, as well as serving Warlingham. In fact it is only 150 metres (geographically) from Whyteleafe station on the parallel Caterham branch.

The 'Upper' prefix was added in 1956 to distinguish the station from Warlingham station on the Caterham line, renamed Whyteleafe South at the same time.

The "Upper" prefix originated because what is now Whyteleafe South station on the Caterham line, approximately 600 yards to the south west, was previously (until 1956) called Warlingham station and the prefix was originally necessary to differentiate them, Whyteleafe South station being lower down in the valley. Somehow the prefix survived the change in 1956.

Typically (2016) the station sees 2 trains per hour to London and East Grinstead.

The station was opened on 10 March 1884 and has seen passenger traffic almost double over the last 10 years, from 533,000 in 2004/05 to 976,000 in 2014/15.

Tunbridge Wells Ghost

TUNBRIDGE WELLS WEST

(All 31.8.1988 Copyright Steve Sainsbury/The Rail Thing)

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For a station and line that closed in 6 July 1985 it was something of a surprise to find that, just over three years later, the tracks were still down and the station and other buildings still standing. I suspect that this will be my last ever brush with the gothic glory of a large railway station entering decay, because they just don't close railways any more!

This was just about the last real railway closure in the UK. A few other short stretches of lines have closed since, but they have all found a new rail use, usually as a tramway. Indeed this line also has as well, but as a heritage line linking a new station at Tunbridge Wells with the Network station at Eridge. But back in 1988 this was all in the future, and the line had fallen into total disuse.

Amazingly the line closed for the sake of £175,000(!!!), the quoted cost of incorporating Grove Junction into the newly electrified Tonbridge to Hastings line. This short section through a tunnel just to the east of the West station remains disused, but is protected for future rail use.

The line saw diesel units for a while after closure, these were stabled at the depot there until new arrangements could be made. This meant the infrastructure stayed in place a little longer.

The Spa Valley Railway has gradually reopened the stretch back to Eridge where cross platform interchange is made with Network trains running up from Uckfield and down from Oxted and beyond. This gives the heritage line useful resilience and also the potential for future community traffic.

Looking further ahead it's likely that many other lines long disused in this area will reopen as the oil runs out and more and more traffic goes to the railways. This includes the iconic Cuckoo line which runs south from Eridge to Polegate near Eastbourne, the useful route from Eridge via East Grinstead to Three Bridges and, of course, the soon to be reopened Lewes-Uckfield line. Bearing all this in mind, plus the progress already made at the Spa Valley, these pics really do show the low point of Tunbridge Wells West's fortunes. I have mixed feelings - gratitude that I got to see this but perhaps regret that I didn't see it in its glory days - and will probably miss seeing the whole network reopen.

Bicester Town 1988

(Both 4.8.1988 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

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Back in August 1988 I stopped off at Bicester Town station to take a couple of photographs.

Back then station reopenings were rare, line reopenings even rarer, so this was something of a novelty. And now the line is being developed further and will eventually form part of an east-west link between Oxford and Cambridge, a line that was stupidly closed back in 1968. Back then planners thought that we'd all just travel from our backwards little towns to London and never go anywhere else. How wrong they were!

EastWestRail website

More information (from Wikipedia)

Bicester Town is the smaller of two railway stations serving the town of Bicester in Oxfordshire. (The larger is Bicester North.) It is 12 miles (19 km) miles north-east of Oxford at the terminus of the Oxford-to-Bicester branch line. Major engineering work to re-double the track and reconnect the branch line to the Chiltern Main Line caused the station to close in February 2014. The new station will open on 26 October 2015 with trains running to Oxford andLondon Marylebone. All trains serving it were operated by Chiltern Railways, which will resume running trains to the reopened station.

History

Bicester London Road with two platforms in 1961

The Buckinghamshire Railway, which already had a route between Bletchley and Banbury, had powers to build a line to Oxford. The first part of this line, from a junction to the west of Winslow (at a point which became known asVerney Junction) to Islip, opened on 1 October 1850, and this included a station at Bicester.^[1][2] Originally named "Bicester", the station was renamed "Bicester London Road" in March 1954, although the nameboards were not altered until 20 September 1954.

The station was closed, along with the rest of the Oxford – Bletchley section of the Varsity Line, on 1 January 1968. However, the station was used by several excursion trains through the 1970s and 1980s.

Network SouthEast reopened the station as "Bicester Town" on 11 May 1987, as the terminus of the Oxford to Bicester Line. From May 2009 First Great Western and Oxfordshire County Council branded the line "The Bicester Link". Since then operation of the line has been transferred from FGW to Chiltern Railways.

Since 1987 the frequency of trains has varied and passenger numbers have fluctuated accordingly. In the four years 2007–11 more frequent trains increased the total number of passengers using Bicester Town by 258%.

The station closed on 15 February 2014 (the last trains having run late on 14 February in order to allow upgrade of the line between Oxford and Bicester. The reopening, first planned for May 2015, will be on 26 October 2015.

On 12 March 2015 Chiltern Railways announced that it will rename the station Bicester Village after the nearby designer retail outlet.

Facilities

Bicester Town station in 1992

Until it closed in 2012 the station had one platform, a covered waiting area, seats, a clock, help point and public address. There was a number of cycle stands but no ticket facilities. Passengers could buy these on the train instead.

The line to the east is used only by freight. The East West Rail Consortium of local authorities plans to extend the Oxford – Bicester service to Milton Keynes Central via Winslow and Bletchley.

There was another track in front of the platform, beside the passenger and freight running line. This was the long reversing siding for the Bicester Military Railway, serving the local MOD depot.^[14]

In August 2008 Chiltern Railways announced a proposal to build a ¹⁄₄ mile (400 m) link between the Oxford to Bicester Line and the Chiltern Main Line to carry a new service between Oxford and London via High Wycombe. The single line between Bicester Town and Oxford will be doubled and a new station is being built at Oxford Parkway. Approval was granted in October 2012.

The Department for Transport has approved the Western Section of the East West Rail Link to link Oxford and Bicester Town with Milton Keynes and Bedford, as part of CP5. It was intended that trains to Bedford should start running by 2017, but on 31 March 2014 Network Rail announced that this had been put back to 2019.

The station will have two car parks. Between them they will provide 230 standard spaces, plus 18 spaces for passengers with reduced mobility. The station will also have parking for 60 pedal cycles and 18 motorcycles.

Services

From December 2008 the service on Mondays to Saturdays was improved with an evening service and a doubling of the service on Saturdays. The service was increased to 11 trains (12 on Fridays) on weekdays and 13 on Saturdays. From May 2009, further improvements saw extra trains in the daytime on Mondays to Fridays and a new all-year round Sunday service, with trains every 90 minutes.

On 22 May 2011 Chiltern Railways took over all passenger operations from this station ahead of the new service between London Marylebone and Oxford that was due to start in 2013. It was later amended to 2015.