Quainton Road railway station served the area of Quainton, in Buckinghamshire, England; it is sited from London. Built by the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, it was the result of pressure from the 3rd Duke of Buckingham to route the railway near his home at Wotton House and to open a railway station at the nearest point to it. Serving a relatively underpopulated area, Quainton Road was a crude railway station, described as "extremely primitive".
It became a junction station in 1871 with the opening of the line to Brill. The Metropolitan Railway took over the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway in 1891. In 1899, Quainton Road became a main line station with the opening of the Great Central Railway London extension.
In 1933, the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership to become the Metropolitan line of the London Passenger Transport Board's London Underground, including Quainton Road. The LPTB aimed to move away from freight operations and saw no way in which the rural parts of the MR could be made into viable passenger routes. In 1935, the Brill Tramway was closed. From 1936, underground trains were withdrawn north of Aylesbury, leaving the London and North Eastern Railway (successor to the GCR) as the only operator using the station, although underground services were restored for a short period in the 1940s. In 1963, stopping passenger services were withdrawn, but fast passenger trains continued to pass through. In 1966, the line was closed to passenger traffic and local goods trains ceased using the station. The line through the station was singled and used by occasional freight trains only.
In 1969, the Quainton Road Society was formed with the aim of preserving the station. In 1971, it absorbed the London Railway Preservation Society, taking over its collection of historic railway equipment including many locomotives, and passenger and non-passenger rolling stock. The station was fully restored and reopened as a museum, the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. In addition to the locomotives, stock, and original station buildings, the museum has also acquired the former station and a London Transport building from , both of which have been reassembled on the site. Although no scheduled trains pass through Quainton Road, the station remains connected to the railway network. Freight trains still use this line and passenger trains still call at the station for special events at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.
Origins
On 15 June 1839, entrepreneur and former Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham, Sir Harry Verney, 2nd Baronet, opened the Aylesbury Railway. Built under the direction of Robert Stephenson, it connected the London and Birmingham Railway's station, on the West Coast Main Line, to in eastern Aylesbury, the first station in the Aylesbury Vale. On 1 October 1863, the Wycombe Railway opened a branch line from Princes Risborough railway station to Aylesbury railway station on the western side of Aylesbury, making Aylesbury the terminus of two small and unconnected branch lines.
Meanwhile, to the north of Aylesbury, the Buckinghamshire Railway was being built by Sir Harry Verney. The scheme consisted of a line running roughly south-west to north-east from Oxford to Bletchley, and a line running south-east from Brackley via Buckingham, joining roughly halfway along the Oxford–Bletchley line. The first section opened on 1 May 1850 and the rest opened on 20 May 1851. The Buckinghamshire Railway intended to extend the line southwards to connect to its station at Aylesbury, but this extension was not built.
Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (10 September 1823 – 26 March 1889), the only son of Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, was in serious financial difficulties by the middle of the 19th century. The second Duke had spent heavily on artworks, womanising and attempting to influence elections
Wotton Tramway
right|thumb|A complex arrangement of sidings, level crossings and a turntable were the only link between the Wotton Tramway and the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway at Quainton Road.|alt=
With a railway now running near the boundary of the Wotton House estate at Quainton Road, the 3rd Duke decided to open a small-scale agricultural railway to connect the estate to the railway. The line was intended purely for the transport of construction materials and agricultural produce, and not passengers. The line was to run roughly south-west from Quainton Road to a new railway station near Wotton Underwood. Just west of the station at Wotton the line split: one section would run west to Wood Siding near Brill; a short stub called Church Siding would run north-west into the village of Wotton Underwood itself, terminating near the parish church, and a one mile 57 chain (one mile 1,254 yards; 2.8km) siding would run north to a coal siding near Kingswood.
He extended it soon afterwards to provide a passenger service to the town of Brill, and the tramway was converted to locomotive operation, known as the Brill Tramway. All goods to and from the Brill Tramway passed through Quainton Road, making it relatively heavily used despite its geographical isolation, and traffic increased further when construction began on Ferdinand de Rothschild's mansion of Waddesdon Manor. The plan of extending the Brill Tramway to Oxford, which would have made Quainton Road a major junction station, was abandoned.
Instead, the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and the Brill Tramway were absorbed by London's Metropolitan Railway (MR), which already operated the line from Aylesbury to London. The MR rebuilt Quainton Road and re-sited it to a more convenient location, allowing through running between the Brill Tramway and the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway. When the Great Central Railway (GCR) from the north of England opened, Quainton Road became a significant junction at which trains from four directions met, and by far the busiest of the MR's rural stations.
Construction began on the line on 8 September 1870. It was built as cheaply as possible, using the cheapest available materials and winding around hills wherever feasible to avoid expensive earthworks. The station platforms were crude earth banks high, held in place by wooden planks. As the Duke intended that the line be worked by horses, it was built with longitudinal sleepers to reduce the risk of them tripping.
On 1 April 1871, the section between Quainton Road and Wotton was formally opened by the Duke in a brief ceremony. At the time of its opening, the line was unnamed, although it was referred to as "The Quainton Tramway" in internal correspondence.
Metropolitan Railway takeover of Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad services
By 1899, the MR and the O&AT were cooperating closely. Although the line had been upgraded in preparation for the Oxford extension and had been authorised as a railway in 1894, construction of the extension had yet to begin. On 27 November, the MR arranged to lease the Tramway from the O&AT, for an annual fee of £600 (about £ in ) with an option to buy the line outright. From 1 December 1899, the MR took over all operations on the Tramway. The O&AT's single passenger coach, a relic of Wotton Tramway days, was removed from its wheels and used as a platelayer's hut at Brill. An elderly Brown, Marshalls and Co passenger coach was transferred to the line to replace it, and a section of each platform was raised to accommodate the higher doors of this coach, using earth and old railway sleepers.
D class locomotives, introduced by the MR to improve services on the former Tramway line, damaged the track, and in 1910, the line between Quainton Road and Brill was relaid to MR standards using old track removed from the inner London MR route, still considered adequate for light use on a rural branch line. Following this track upgrading, the speed limit was increased to . The MR was unhappy with the performance and safety record of the D Class locomotives, and sold them to other railways between 1916 and 1922, replacing them with A class locomotives.
Great Central Railway
right|thumb|Railways in and around the Aylesbury Vale, 1910–35. With the opening of the Great Central Railway, railway lines from four different directions met at Quainton Road, but the new routes to the west were reducing the significance of Quainton Road as an interchange. Watkin had intended to run services from Manchester and Sheffield via Quainton Road and along the MR to [[Baker Street tube station|Baker Street. Following Watkin's retirement in 1894, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway obtained permission for a separate station in London near Baker Street at Marylebone, and the line was renamed the Great Central Railway (GCR). The new line joined the MR just north of Quainton Road, and opened to passengers on 15 March 1899.
Although it served a lightly populated area, the opening of the GCR made Quainton Road an important junction station at which four railway lines met. The number of passengers using the station rose sharply. It had many passengers in comparison to other stations in the area. In 1932, the last year of private operation, the station saw 10,598 passenger journeys, earning a total of £601 (about £ in ) in passenger receipts.
Quainton Road was by far the busiest of the MR's rural passenger stations north of Aylesbury. Verney Junction railway station saw only 943 passenger journeys in the same year, and the five other stations on the Brill Tramway had a combined passenger total of 7,761.
Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
Following Watkin's retirement, relations between the GCR and the MR deteriorated badly. The GCR route to London ran over the MR from Quainton Road to London, and to reduce reliance on the hostile MR, GCR General Manager William Pollitt decided to create a link with the Great Western Railway and a route into London that bypassed the MR. In 1899, the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway began construction of a new line, commonly known as the Alternative Route, to link the GWR at Princes Risborough to the GCR at Grendon Underwood, about three miles (5 km) north of Quainton Road. Although formally an independent company, the new line was operated as a part of the GCR. A substantial part of GCR traffic to and from London was diverted onto the Alternative Route, reducing the significance of Quainton Road as an interchange and damaging the profitability of the MR.