What is now the branch line from Maidenhead to Marlow, by way of Cookham, has had a chequered and patchy history. It is now enjoying something of an upswing even though the original purpose of the line was long since made redundant by the closure of part of the line.
It was on 27 July 1846 that Parliament approved the Wycombe Railway Act, which envisaged a route running from Oxford to Maidenhead by way of Thame and High Wycombe with a branch line out to Aylesbury. Almost at once the company announced that it had failed to raise the necessary money to build the line. Nothing much happened for another six years, when the Wycombe Railway Company announced that it had hired as chief engineer none other than Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the greatest engineer of his age and mastermind of the Great Western Railway. Brunel had agreed to work for the Wycombe Railway Company only on condition that he was allowed a completely free hand in the design of the railway and its works. The directors were only too pleased to agree so long as their relatively minor project got the name of Brunel associated with it.
As hoped, the arrival of the new engineer led to a change in fortunes. Construction work began, although there was only enough money to get the line from Maidenhead as far as High Wycombe. Brunel insisted on a number of special features for the new railway. The first was that it should be built to his preferred broad gauge of 7ft 1/4in, rather than the standard gauge of 4ft 81⁄2in. The broad gauge was that used on the GWR, though other railways had preferred the standard gauge.
A second stipulation was that, apart from the main station at Wycombe, all the stations had to be constructed to an identical design. These were to have a booking office at one end with an open porch or waiting area at the other. Stations that had a level crossing beside them were provided with a small house in which the crossing keeper could live. The buildings were all to be of brick and knapped flint. Brunel believed this design incorporated everything a smaller station would need, while the standardisation would help to keep costs down.
It was the third engineering decision that was to cause trouble. Brunel always had a liking for innovative design and for the tracks he chose the new and impressive, but untried barlow rails. These had been invented by William Henry Barlow, chief engineer to the Midland Railway and were being used on all the lines running out of St Pancras.
The exciting feature of the barlow rails was that they did not need sleepers. Instead of being tied to timbers at frequent intervals to keep them in position, the barlow rails relied on inertia. They took the form of an upside down V, the hollow centre being packed with sand and gravel before the rail was buried half deep in the ballast of the road bed. The technique speeded up construction and made it easier to lay out complex patterns of crossovers and points. Experience was to show that the rails were not as stable in the long term as Barlow and Brunel had hoped, but that was for the future.
In the 1850s, all seemed well for the new Wycombe Railway. Construction was completed quickly and efficiently under Brunel’s watchful eye.
On 1 August 1854 the line was opened from Maidenhead to High Wycombe. There then followed a pause to raise more capital before the line was pushed on to reach Thame in August 1862, Aylesbury in October 1863 and finally Oxford in October 1864.
The Berkshire section of the Wycombe Railway was only ever a small part of its total length. From a junction with the GWR at Maidenhead, the line curved sharply north, then ran gently downhill to the station at Cookham. The lines then ran on downhill to reach the damp, boggy watermeadows of Cock Marsh. These were crossed by a low viaduct, later replaced by an embankment. The line then crossed the Thames by way of a wooden viaduct, later replaced by an iron girder bridge. The line then entered Bourne End Station before running on through Woodburn Green to Loudwater and so to High Wycombe.
Having overseen the successful construction of the line, the Wycombe Railway Company decided to take a backseat when it came actually to running the trains. The line was leased out to the GWR, which ran it profitably until 1867 when the GWR bought out the Wycombe Railway Company.
No comments:
Post a Comment