page_title: Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway
section_title: The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton main line
hierarchical_section_title: Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway / The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton main line
caption_attribution_description: English: The Chipping Norton and Bourton-on-the-Water railway branch lines in England in 1862
context_page_description: The Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway was a railway company in England that built a line between points near Banbury and Cheltenham. Its principal objective, as well as a general rural rail service, was the conveyance of iron ore from the East Midlands to South Wales. It extended two pre-existing branches, the Chipping Norton branch of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway and the Bourton-on-the-Water Railway. Both branches had their main line junction at Chipping Norton Junction, later renamed Kingham, on the OW&WR main line.
  The B&CDR opened its western section, from Bourton-on-the-Water to a junction near Cheltenham, in 1881, and its eastern section, from Chipping Norton to a junction at King's Sutton, near Banbury, in 1887. The company was always short of money, and the timescale of construction was correspondingly lengthy. When the extensions opened, the Great Western Railway worked the B&CDR line and the two earlier branches as a single railway throughout.
context_section_description: Construction of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway was authorised by Parliament on 4 August 1845. It was designed to connect the industrial areas of the West Midlands with the growing railway network, and it was to be built on the broad gauge. The Great Western Railway had friendly relations with it at first, and agreed to lease it on generous terms. That relationship deteriorated later, when the cost of construction overran considerably and there was a misunderstanding about the extent to which the GWR guarantee would cover the additional cost. While the broad gauge on the line tied the OW&WR to alliance with the GWR, it installed mixed gauge enabling the operation of standard gauge trains, and this was seen as an obvious indicator of treachery by the GWR.
  By the time of the authorisation of the OW&WR, William Bliss had established an exceedingly successful business manufacturing tweed cloth in Chipping Norton, and he had extensive factory premises there. As well as facilities for transporting his products away to market, his business required considerable quantities of coal to power machinery used in his works. Transport by animal power was slow and expensive, especially as the road network in the Cotswolds was poor, and Bliss was anxious to take advantage of the railway. When the OW&WR line was designed, there were to be stations at Charlbury, Shipton-under-Wychwood and Adlestrop. All of these were six miles (10 km) or so distant from Chipping Norton, making them unsatisfactory for Bliss's needs, although the railway line was to pass much closer to the town.
caption: The Chipping Norton and Bourton-on-the-Water branches in 1862
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