Talk:Wotton railway station (Brill Tramway)

Church Siding

Are you sure that Church Siding was never open to passengers? It certainly appeared in the passenger timetable and Simpson (1985) states that it was open until 1895. Butt also lists it as a station. Lamberhurst (talk) 10:43, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Butt, p.61 shows opened Nov 1871, closed Aug 1894. Also see:

• Jones, Ken (1974). The Wotton Tramway (Brill Branch). Locomotion Papers. Blandford: Oakwood Press. LP75. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

When dealing with the route of the original (private) line, it says "This station [Wotton] ... was the nearest station to Dorton. Church Siding was next, giving direct access to Wotton Underwood village, and was also the junction with the Kingswood branch line. Eventually the line was extended from Church Siding to Brill" (Jones 1974, p. 6); and dealing with the opening in November 1871: "There were stopping places at Waddesdon Road, Westcott, Wotton, Church Siding, Wood Siding and Brill ... Platforms of earth retained by sods were provided at all stopping places." (Jones 1974, p. 9) The only fatality on the line occurred in that area: "On 8th March, 1883 ... The lady's maid of the Duke of Buckingham's daughter was walking along the line was walking along the line with two other ladies' maids, between Wotton and Church Siding, having just disembarked from the evening train from Quainton" (Jones 1974, p. 19). Most convincing of all, is a copy of the timetable effective 1 October 1887, which has up trains leaving Church Siding at 7.21 am and 2.46 pm, with down trains liaving Church Siding at 10.16 am and 7.6 pm (Jones 1974, p. 22). The timetable of 22 Sep 1894 (Jones 1974, p. 24) does not mention Church Siding; it would seem to have been omitted from the general reconstruction of 1894. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:32, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by "station", I suppose. As far as I'm aware, it never had any facilities of any sort other than the water tower—no platforms, no goods shed, no signalman, no waiting room… It only appeared in the timetable because the trains stopped there to pick up and drop off the horse-tramcars for the Kingswood branch; I don't think it even had a road connection to Wotton or any of the farms. To me, "stopping place" isn't the same as "station"; if Church Siding is included as a station, we need also to include Gasworks Siding, Brickworks Siding, the abandoned Poore's Siding and the spurs and bays along the Kingswood branch as "stations", which seems just silly to me. The map on the centre-spread of Melton, which I generally treat as the "canonical" diagram, explicitly doesn't label Church Siding as a station. – iridescent 19:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Out of interest, I looked it up in (RCH (1904)) - it is listed (twice: the first to show that its subsidiary to Wotton) as a station with no facilities. Pyrotec (talk) 20:14, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

According to Butt - the "bible" when it comes to railway stations - to qualify as a "station" the location in question has to have been a member of the RCH and feature in a public timetable. On this basis, none of the sidings you have mentioned are listed as stations, but Church Siding is. Lamberhurst (talk) 20:24, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

On closer look, (Melton 1984, p. 24) explicitly mentions a platform at Church Siding at least in the very early days, so I'll concede that at least in the earliest days it was treated as a station. (Certainly by the time of the undated photo on (Simpson 2005, p. 98) all trace of any structures other than the rails and the Black Tank itself had vanished.) I'm not at all sure there will ever be a viable article, although I'll see what I can do; it's literally undocumented. (Everything that does any kind of station-by-station treatment, from Jones's 1974 booklet to A History of the Metropolitan Railway itself, jumps from Wotton to Wood Siding, with a mention of the Kingswood branch but no mention of anything at the junction other than the Black Tank.) – iridescent 20:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I would say that the crucial event is the 1894 reconstruction of the line; prior to then, Church Siding was a station; after then, it wasn't. Thus, books (or chapters in them) which deal exclusively with post-1894 events won't mention it. Jones divides his history, describing the route twice: so it's the portion up to page 24 that should be examined closest. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

My current plan is to do a ground-up rewrite of Brill Tramway next. (Basically, go through each of the books listed in the bibliography and further reading sections plus things like the 1936 Railway Magazine article, and build it up that way, then check it against the existing article and see if that mentions anything that's not covered in the "new" version and find sources for it.) Anything CS related that turns up when I'm doing that—which will mean going through everything cover-to-cover anyway—I'll set aside, and organise it into whatever kind of shape I can once I see how much I turn up. I'm putting off Quainton Road until I do the Verney Junction line, as it's far more a part of that story than of the Tramway's. There's also a lot of stuff currently there which would be better off on Buckinghamshire Railway Centre which needs to be quietly moved. – iridescent 22:07, 16 June 2010 (UTC)