Station Name: BOW BRICKHILL
Station still open but included for completeness


[Source: Nick Catford]


Date opened: 30.11.1905
Location: Both sides of Brickhill Road
Company on opening: London & North Western Railway
Date closed to passengers: Still open
Date closed completely: Still open
Company on closing: Still open
Present state: Still open - a most of the original low up platform survives as does a short section of the original down platform.
County: Buckinghamshire
OS Grid Ref: SP896348
Date of visit: 16 February 2014

Notes: The London and North Western Railway opened Bow Brickhill station in 1905 to cater for the new rail-motor service between Bletchley and Bedford which began on 1 December 1905. It was one of seven new halts to have staggered platforms. As built Bow Brickhill was very basic with a low 50ft-long platform constructed of old sleepers at rail level with a nameboard and oil lamps. There was a timber waiting room with a pitched slate roof on the up platform. The rail-motors were fitted with folding steps for passengers boarding or alighting at Bow Brickhill.

Along with the other rail-motor halts on the Bedford - Bletchley line, during WW1 Bow Brickhill closed on 1 January 1917 as an economy measure. The halt reopened on 5 May 1919. With the introduction of DMUs in 1959 the original platforms were replaced with longer conventional height platforms, but still timber-built. The original up platform and waiting room were retained with the new platform being added at the end.

Bow Brickhill lost its staffing and gated level crossing to modernisation in the 1980s, and since then the station has been unmanned except for two security cameras operated from other stations.

Until 2004 Bow Brickhill was unique on the line for having staggered platforms. The purpose of this is so that road traffic on the level crossing is not held up by trains standing still in the platform. However, in 2004 Aspley Guise, Lidlington and Stewartby, have been re-modelled; as part of the Bedford-Bletchley route modernisation their platforms are now also staggered.

Another oddity about Bow Brickhill is that the road crossing here, has a roundabout immediately on either side of the crossing. This causes traffic jams whenever the crossing barriers are down, as each roundabout clogs with the traffic queue and remains so for up to ten minutes.

Bow Brickhill station, in common with others on the Marston Vale Line, is covered by the Marston Vale Community Rail Partnership, which aims to increase use of the line by involving local people. Services are operated by a Class 153 single car diesel multiple unit and 2-car class 150 unit.

Click here to see a short film of am EWS Class 37 hauling a passenger train through Bow Brickhill station in the 2000s,

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BEDFORD RAILWAY
A group of local businessmen first promoted a line to Bedford in 1844. The proposal was supported by engineer George Stephenson. A public meeting was held on 23 April 1844 where there was some discussion about where the line should form a junction with the London & Birmingham. Stephenson was keen that the junction should be at Bletchley and although there was spirited opposition his proposal was eventually accepted.

A prospectus for the Bedford & London & Birmingham Railway was drawn up on 28 May 1844, with the engineers being named as George and Robert Stephenson. When complete the line was to be worked by the London & Birmingham Railway; work started on 13 December 1845 and was completed in September 1846



During the construction of the Bedford line, the London & Birmingham Railway amalgamated with the Grand Junction Railway to form the London & North Western Railway who took over the running of the line.

Intermediate stations from Bletchley were Fenny Stratford, Ridgmont, Lidlington and Manston (later renamed Millbrook). The line opened on 18 November 1846; the line from Oxford - Bletchley opened on 20 May 1851. The final link from Bedford to Cambridge opened on 7 July 1862 provided an important cross-country line between Oxford and Cambridge, forming one of the few east-west routes with the capability of reaching the east coast ports. Most services, however, ran from Oxford to Bletchley and from Bletchley to Cambridge.

A rail-motor service between Bletchley and Belford was introduced on 1 December 1905. Seven new stations were opened at Bow Brickhill, Aspley Guise, Husborne Crawley, Wootton Pillinge, Wootton Broadmead, Kempston Hardwick and Kempston & Elstow. An eighth one called Brickyard Halt is shown in company records near Wootton Pillinge but this never appeared in a public timetable. Whereas the Great Western Railway named such additional unstaffed stations ‘halts’ the London & North Western Railway referred to them as ‘motor’ or ‘rail-motor’ stations, and subsequently there has been uncertainty about whether Bow Brickhill and the others should be called ‘halts’. The Ordnance Survey practice for the Bedford Railway motor stations was to identify them as halts until the London Midland Region ceased to use this suffix in 1968.

The rail-motors were superseded by pull-and-push units which continued in operation until the introduction of DMUs in 1959.

The Second World War intensified traffic on the line as never before. With the return of peace and the nationalisation of the run-down railway network the newly formed British Railways Board was looking to close unprofitable lines.

In 1955 the Railway Modernisation Plan proposed improvements to cross-country facilities between Oxford and Cambridge with the aim of maintaining a link between the major main line railways outside the congested Greater London area thereby allowing freight traffic to be transferred between three railway regions and easing the burden on London marshalling yards. Within a few years the policy changed and the line was not upgraded with the Bletchley flyover remaining as a monument to the fruitless proposal.

An attempt was made to close the Oxford - Bletchley - Cambridge line in 1959 but local pressure succeeded in winning a reprieve. There was some relief when Dr Beeching did not include the cross country Oxford to Cambridge line in his closure proposals in 1963, but just one year later the British Railways Board published closure plans for the whole route. The introduction of new diesel trains in the 1960s allowed British Railways to run much faster trains, and the need for a cross country service declined as passengers found it quicker to travel between Oxford and Cambridge via London. The lines between Oxford and Bletchley and Bedford and Cambridge closed after the last day of service on 30 December 1967; the section between Bletchley and Bedford remained open, although downgraded.



All of the stations lost their goods and parcels facilities, and every station except Bletchley became an unstaffed halt from 15 July 1968. Closure was once again proposed, and it was announced that the remaining section of the Oxford - Cambridge route would close in October 1972. There were numerous objections to the closure which was postponed until a suitable replacement bus service could be introduced. Once this was in place closure was announced for 31 December 1972.

The Bedford Rail Users' Association was formed to fight the closure, and the opposition was so strong that British Rail was forced to postpone once again, pending an appeal by local groups. At this time government thinking on rail closures was changing and a grant was provided to maintain the service. With the development of the large new town of Milton Keynes, which incorporated Bletchley, the line began attracting new customers.

In 1973 a 20-year contract between the Greater London Council and the London Brick Company assured the line’s future. The contract was worth £10m to British Rail who began operating block trains between new sidings at Stewartby and a new handling depot at Hendon.

For much of the twentieth century this 16-mile line had a particularly distinctive character, its closely-spaced stations being either in the Gothic Revival style or diminutive halts. The numerous staffed level crossings also gave the line a certain charm; even in the mid 1980s the passenger would be aware of gate-keepers standing at each crossing as their train passed. The landscape was also distinctive between Bedford and Ridgmont as the route was hemmed in by forests of tall chimneys and massive clay pits. Nowhere was this more the case than at Stewartby. From 1968 until its replacement in 1984 on a new route into Bedford (Midland) the Bedford – Bletchley line had its eastern terminus at Bedford St Johns, an unstaffed ‘halt’ an inconvenient distance from the main line station.

The service is now operated by Marston Vale Community Rail Partnership part of London Midland who operate services on the West Coast Main Line from London Euston previously run by Silverlink and in the West Midlands previously run by Central Trains. The franchise was originally due to expire in September 2015 but in March 2013 was extended until June 2017.

The Bedford - Bletchley (Marston Vale) Line is one of the two remaining sections of the former Varsity Line (Oxford - Cambridge) still in passenger use. In the 2011 Autumn Statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced the allocation of £270 million for the East West Rail Consortium to reinstate the Oxford – Bletchley – Bedford section of the Varsity Line. The service will link the Marston Vale Line (calling at Bedford, Lidlington, Woburn Sands and Bletchley only) to Winslow, Bicester Town, Oxford and Reading. The Consortium hopes later to reopen the Bedford — Cambridge section, for which a new route may be required, possibly involving the use of the East Coast main line south from Sandy then the Hitchin – Cambridge line, with a new north-to-east chord just north of Hitchin.

On 16 July 2012 the Coalition Government announced that the Marston Vale route would be electrified, as will the currently disused line from Bletchley to Oxford. This would form part of a wider 'Electric Spine' stretching from Yorkshire and the West Midlands to Southampton and South Coast Ports.

Ticket from Michael Stewart. Bradshaw from Nick Catford. Route map by Alan Young

To see other stations on the Bedford Railway between Bletchley and Bedford (The Marston Vale Line) click on the station name:
Fenny Stratford, Woburn Sands, Aspley Guise, Husborne Crawley (Closed), Ridgmont, Lidlington, Millbrook, Stewartby, Wooton Broadmead (Closed), Kempston Hardwick & Kempston & Elstow (Closed)

To see the other stations on the Oxford - Cambridge line click on the station name: Oxford Rewley Road, Port Meadow Halt, Wolvercote Halt, Oxford Road Halt, Islip, Oddington Halt, Charlton Halt, Wendlebury Halt, Bicester London Road, Launton, Marsh Gibbon & Poundon, Claydon, Verney Junction, Winslow, Swanbourne, Bedford St. Johns, Willington, Blunham, Girtford Halt, Sandy, Potton, Gamlingay, Old North Road & Lords Bridge


Bow Brickhill Station Gallery 1 1950s - Late 1960s

Bow Brickhill up platform and signal box, looking south-east in the 1960s. The station looked much the same in the 1960s as it did when it was opened in 1905 apart from the signal box which was a later addition. The rail-motors were fitted with folding steps for passengers boarding or alighting.
Photo from John Mann collection


1925 1:2,500 OS map shows the two short staggered platforms with the waiting room on the up platform; the 4-lever signal box had not been built at this time.

1963 1:2,500 OS map shows the station after the platforms were rebuilt. They were originally 50ft long; they are now twice that length. The signal box is shown but the crossing keeper's cottage is no longer included although it was still standing at this time.

Bow Brickhill station looking south-west from the down platform in the 1960s. The crossing keeper's cottage is seen on the left.
Photo from John Mann collection

Bow Brickhill up platform and waiting room in June 1957. The crossing keeper's cottage is on the far side of the crossing,
Copyright photo by RM Casserley

Passengers wait on the low sleeper platform for the push-and-pull steam service to Bletchley in May 1958, a year before the platform was raised to coincide with the introduction of DMUs.
photo from John Mann collection

Cattle are seen on the Bow Brickhill level crossing c 1950.

A Derby Class 108 DMU waits at the down platform at Bow Brickhill station in 1962.The B3 headcode indicates a Cambridge to Bletchley service. The track-level original platform has been retained for access to the new standard height platform built in 1959.
Photo by Ben Brooksbank

Film still from 'The Elusive Elshaw' an episode of ‘The Saint’ (starring Roger Moore as Simon Templar) which was broadcast in 1963. The story: Kenneth Ripwell leaves his father's house for London in his sports car. He is followed by Simon in his Volvo, seen here approaching the level
crossing at Bow Brickhill.

Looking south-west at the up platform at Bow Brickhill c 1960s. The waiting room is in its original position on the remaining section of low platform.
photo from John Mann collection

Bow Brickhill station looking north-east from the down platform c 1960s. The new platforms were lit by oil lamps supplemented by an earlier electric lamp on the low platform.
photo from John Mann collection

A northbound 2-car Derby Lightweight DMU is approaching the down platform at Bow Brickhill c1960s.
photo from John Mann collection

Bow Brickhill down platform looking south-west c late 1960s. The gate keeper's cottage, which was on the left this side of the crossing, has been demolished.
photo from John Mann collection

Signal box and waiting room at the north end of the up platform at Bow Brickhill c late 1960s. The entrance to the platform is behind the signal box. To avoid having to rebuild the waiting room most of the original low platform was retained when the new platforms were built in 1959.
photo from John Mann collection

Click here for Bow Brickhill Station Gallery 2
Late 1960s - February 2014

 

 

 

[Source: Nick Catford]


Last updated: Sunday, 04-Jun-2017 09:54:44 CEST
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