Charlbury railway station is a

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 ...

serving the town of

Charlbury Charlbury () is a town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the River Evenlode, Evenlode valley, about north of Witney in the West Oxfordshire district of Oxfordshire, England. It is on the edge of Wychwood, Wychwood Forest and the C ...

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. This station and all trains serving it are operated by

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, ...

. After almost 40 years as a single-platform station, the track through Charlbury station was redoubled with the recommissioning of a second platform on 6 June 2011 as part of the project to improve reliability and increase traffic capacity on the

Cotswold Line The Cotswold Line is an railway line between and in England. History Early years The line between Oxford and Worcester was built under an 1845 Act of Parliament and opened in 1851 as part of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway ...

History

The

Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway (OW&WR) was a railway company in England. It built a line from Wolvercot JunctionThe nearby settlement is spelt ''Wolvercote'' and a later station on the LNWR Bicester line follows that spelling. ...

opened the station in 1853. It is notable for the original station building, a wooden

chalet A chalet (pronounced in British English; in American English usually ), also called Swiss chalet, is a type of building or house, typical of the Alpine region in Europe. It is made of wood, with a heavy, gently sloping roof and wide, well-su ...

-type structure in the Italianate architectural style of

Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel ( ; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", "one of the 19th-century engi ...

; together with the early station nameboard this is a Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

restored in 1979. Until 1970 the station had a

goods shed A goods shed is a railway building designed for storing goods before, after, and during loading to and unloading from a train. A typical goods shed will have a track running through it to allow goods wagons to be unloaded under cover, althou ...

, a 30 cwt crane and a 34-lever

signal box A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

. The signal box was demolished when the line through the station was singled on 29 November 1971. Sir Peter Parker (1924–2002), the former chairman of 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 ...

, was a regular user of the station. With the completion of the first stage of the redoubling of the Cotswold Line from to a point east of Charlbury, the second platform, decommissioned in 1971, was reinstated and returned to service on 6 June 2011.

2018 Improvement Works

Charlbury and

Kingham Kingham is a village and civil parish in the Cotswolds about southwest of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 913. Toponym The Domesday Book of 1086 records the toponym as ''Caningeham''. Anoth ...

are two of the stations on the Cotswold Line that had their platforms lengthened to accommodate longer GWR Class 802 units, which are nine carriages long — one carriage longer than the

longest trains The length of a train may be measured in number of wagons (commonly used for bulk commodities such as coal and iron ore) or in metres for general freight. On electrified railways, particularly those using lower-voltage systems such as 3 kV DC a ...

that previously used the station.

Facilities

Charlbury station is one of the only two-platform stations on the Cotswold Line to have step-free access to both platforms. This has been achieved by installing a long set of ramps from the lower car park to both platforms. Charlbury is one of the only stations in the area that has a user-operated

ticket machine A ticket machine, also known as a ticket vending machine (TVM), is a vending machine that produces paper or electronic tickets, or recharges a stored-value card or smart card or the user's mobile wallet, typically on a smartphone. For instance, ...

. Kingham and Finstock, the main stations on the either side of Charlbury, do not have such facilities. However, passengers travelling from either of these stations when the ticket office is closed can board the service and buy a ticket on the train.

Services

Great Western Railway operate all services at Charlbury. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: * 1 tph to

London Paddington Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a London railway station and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great Western Ra ...

* 1 tph to of which some continue to and

References

External links

*
Station users' collaborative blog
{{Coord, 51.872, N, 1.490, W, type:railwaystation_region:GB, display=title Railway stations in Oxfordshire DfT Category E stations Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1853 Railway stations served by Great Western Railway Charlbury Grade II listed buildings in Oxfordshire Grade II listed railway stations