Abingdon railway station was a station which served the town of Abingdon in

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire ( ; abbreviated ''Oxon'') is a ceremonial county in South East England. The county is bordered by Northamptonshire and Warwickshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the east, Berkshire to the south, and Wiltshire and Glouceste ...

, England until 1963.

History

The station was built by the Abingdon Railway, a short branch line at which Abingdon was the terminus and only stop, although this was operated by the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

(GWR) from opening on 2 June 1856. The station and yard were built to the

broad gauge A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways. Broad gauge of , more known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union countries ...

on land acquired from the Mayor and Aldermen of the Borough of Abingdon on 19 March 1856 at a cost of £472. Seven properties were demolished to make way for the station and yard, including the Plough Inn which was subsequently rebuilt at a different location. The approach to the station from Stert Street had gates and no

public right of way A right of way (also right-of-way) is a specific route that people, animals, vehicles, watercraft, or utility lines travel, or the legal status that gives them the right to do so. Rights-of-way in the physical sense include controlled-access h ...

was allowed. Station facilities consisted of a single platform covered by a timber

train shed A train shed is a building adjacent to a station building where the tracks and platforms of a railway station are covered by a roof. It is also known as an overall roof. Its primary purpose is to store and protect from the elements train car ...

. A locomotive shed was built on land which was never formally conveyed to the railway, but later acquired by

adverse possession Adverse possession in common law, and the related civil law (legal system), civil law concept of usucaption (also ''acquisitive prescription'' or ''prescriptive acquisition''), are legal mechanisms under which a person who does not have title (p ...

. The Abingdon Railway was absorbed by the GWR on 15 August 1904. The line passed on to the Western Region of British Railways on

nationalisation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization contrasts with priv ...

in 1948, and was then closed to passengers by the

British Railways Board The British Railways Board (BRB) was a State ownership, nationalised industry in the United Kingdom that operated from 1963 to 2001. Until 1997, it was responsible for most railway services in History of rail transport in Great Britain 1995 to d ...

in 1963. The branch continued to be used by freight trains (notably for MG Cars) and sporadic passenger excursions, the last of which took place in June 1984. It was also sometimes pressed into service as an overnight stabling point for the Royal Train during royal visits to Oxfordshire, in connection with which the train is known to have stopped at station on at least one occasion. The branch track was lifted in the late 1980s. A fraction of the former railway line is now used for a cyclepath, while the station and the adjoining part of the line near the town centre are now occupied by a

Waitrose Waitrose Limited, trading as Waitrose & Partners, is a British supermarket chain, founded in 1904 as Waite, Rose & Taylor, later shortened to Waitrose. In 1937, it was acquired by the John Lewis Partnership, the UK's largest employee-owned b ...

supermarket, parking and other development. The station featured briefly in a 1963 documentary film made for cinematic release, "High, Wide and Faster" (from the '' Look at Life'' series), which examined contemporary developments in road, rail, and sea transport.

Routes

Notes

References

Bibliography

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External links

Station on navigable O.S. map

Sub Brit site

GWR Abingdon Branch

Track diagram

Disused stations - with maps and photos
{{Closed stations Oxfordshire Disused railway stations in Oxfordshire Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1856 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1963

Railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

History of Berkshire