Part 1: 1965 - 1967
In Search of the Great Western Railway Part 1: 1965 - 1967 I first met Chris Leigh in the summer of 1965, through his brother Roger (who was also at Strode’s School, though a couple of years below me), in connection with the formation of the Staines Model Railway Society, and also with tentative proposals for the preservation of the Staines West branch line, recently closed. We discovered a shared interest in the rural routes of the former Great Western Railway, and together with another school friend, Paul Chamberlain we embarked initially on a series of day trips then planned a longer holiday tour for August 1966. The station sketch plans included here are just that; not to scale, and exactly as we drew them at the time. Where track had been lifted but its location was still clear, we drew it in, but otherwise left blank spaces. Saturday 23rd October 1965 As Chris was the only one of us who had passed his driving test by then, we ventured forth from Staines early in the morning in his trusty Hillman Minx. Our trip book shows that we headed first towards the Oxford area, calling in at Taplow and Marlow stations, Lewknor Bridge Halt on the Watlington branch, then Thame, Tiddington and Wheatley on the line from Oxford to Princes Risborough. However the Thames Valley fog was slow to clear, and our Ektachrome colour-slide film expensive then, so my first photograph that day was ironically not on the GWR at all, but at Islip, a remote station on the former London & North Western Railway line from Oxford (Rewley Road) to Bicester and Bletchley.
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