page_title: Oxford, Witney and Fairford Railway
section_title: The East Gloucestershire Railway
hierarchical_section_title: Oxford, Witney and Fairford Railway / The East Gloucestershire Railway
caption_attribution_description: English: Fairford Station, View westward, towards buffer-stops; ex-Great Western terminus of branch from Oxford via Witney, which closed completely on 18/6/62. (In fact the line continued for a few hundred yards further, as it had been intended to go to Cirencester). The train is about to leave for Oxford, hauled by a 22XX class 0-6-0.
context_page_description: The Oxford, Witney and Fairford Railway was a single track railway branch line, 22 miles long, in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. It was opened in succession by two companies, the first in 1861 to connect the important woollen town of Witney to the main line network, and the second in 1873 as the rump of an ambitious scheme to connect to Cheltenham, but which ran only between Witney and Fairford. The junction with the main line was at Yarnton, north of Oxford.
  The Great Western Railway worked the two companies' lines as a single branch line from 1873, and later absorbed them. British Railways withdrew passenger services in 1962; a residual goods service to Witney remained until 1970.
context_section_description: The East Gloucestershire Railway was originally conceived as a through line from Faringdon to Cheltenham, with a branch to Witney. It obtained an authorising Act in 1862 with share capital of £600,000, but GWR opposition frustrated the promoters' intentions, and a second Act was obtained on 29 July 1864, for a 50 miles (80 km) line to be worked by the Midland Railway. The GWR appealed against the arrangement, and the powers were reduced to building a 14 miles (23 km) line from Witney to Fairford, with share capital of £300,000.
  The usual Board of Trade inspection took place on 10 January 1873 and the line was opened with the usual ceremony on 14 January 1873, with ordinary passenger operation starting the next day. In effect the line was simply an extension of the Witney line. The junction at Witney was on the Oxford side of the original Witney station, so that the new Witney station was on the new line; the former Witney station was reduced to the status of a goods station.
  Stations on the new line were therefore Fairford, Lechlade, Alvescot, Bampton and Witney. The GWR operated the line (as a continuous branch incorporating the Witney line and the new extension) and also maintained the line.
caption: Fairford station in 1961
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "EPSON scanner image", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "78", "Image YResolution": "78", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:08:27 18:06:02", "Image ExifOffset": "204", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "342", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6250", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "640", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "385"}