“There used to be a lot of trains and now there are nearly none”, I have actually had lots of hairbrained ideas for this assignment that I will probably not even try to put down on paper. My current Idea is to look at the old Tongham branch line that was closed in the Beeching reform. I have a lot of memories of part of it, which has now been removed by the construction of the A331. When I was a boy between 12 and 15 I used to go shooting with my Dad on a bit of land that was owned by a local farmer, Dad had permission to shoot on the farm to help keep the pidgeons etc off the crops. Along one edge was a bank which I learned was part of an old railway line removed in the Beeching cuts.
Today the stations are now gone but sections of the railway still exist, there are some lovely bridges and repurposed buildings along the way. I am considering using old OS Maps and documenting the traces that still exist of the old railway. The following is a segment of the 2018OS map I have highlighted the route of the old Tongham branch line in yellow.
