This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/10/chris-grayling-oxford-cambridge-line-verney-junction
The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 2 | Version 3 |
|---|---|
| Chris Grayling’s Oxford-Cambridge line will clatter through 75 miles of English history Chris Grayling’s Oxford-Cambridge line will clatter through 75 miles of English history | |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| As he must have intended, the transport secretary Chris Grayling caused a small storm this week by announcing that he intended to bridge the great divide on Britain’s railways – between the infrastructure (the track and the signalling, presently owned by the non-profit public body Network Rail), and the privately owned trains that use it. | As he must have intended, the transport secretary Chris Grayling caused a small storm this week by announcing that he intended to bridge the great divide on Britain’s railways – between the infrastructure (the track and the signalling, presently owned by the non-profit public body Network Rail), and the privately owned trains that use it. |
| The importance of the announcement was talked up beforehand, and the rail unions and parts of the Labour party dutifully sounded the alarm: Grayling, apparently, was taking the first step down the road towards full-scale privatisation, a regression to the share-price-driven and disaster-prone world of Network Rail’s incompetent predecessor, Railtrack. | The importance of the announcement was talked up beforehand, and the rail unions and parts of the Labour party dutifully sounded the alarm: Grayling, apparently, was taking the first step down the road towards full-scale privatisation, a regression to the share-price-driven and disaster-prone world of Network Rail’s incompetent predecessor, Railtrack. |
| It may indeed be that. Nothing about Grayling should come as an unpleasant surprise. The unpleasantness is expected. He is intensely and narrowly political. As justice secretary, he wanted to stop prisoners having books sent to them; in the same cabinet role, he wrote in 2013 to the then London mayor, Boris Johnson, to oppose Transport for London’s plan to take over more suburban rail services on the grounds that it would leave more trains “in the clutches of a Labour mayor”. | It may indeed be that. Nothing about Grayling should come as an unpleasant surprise. The unpleasantness is expected. He is intensely and narrowly political. As justice secretary, he wanted to stop prisoners having books sent to them; in the same cabinet role, he wrote in 2013 to the then London mayor, Boris Johnson, to oppose Transport for London’s plan to take over more suburban rail services on the grounds that it would leave more trains “in the clutches of a Labour mayor”. |
| There can be no mistaking the side he’s on – the public good is best served by private business, for ever and ever, amen – but his proposals this week looked more like a desperate plea for personal attention than a coded portent of radical change. We may even have to face the fact that the bland managerial jargon (“transforming the passenger experience”) contains some good news. If all goes well, it will be possible once again to take a train along the old 75-mile cross-country route between Oxford and Cambridge, rather than taking the 120-mile detour via London, where the traveller has to change stations as well as trains. If all goes well, it will happen by 2030. | There can be no mistaking the side he’s on – the public good is best served by private business, for ever and ever, amen – but his proposals this week looked more like a desperate plea for personal attention than a coded portent of radical change. We may even have to face the fact that the bland managerial jargon (“transforming the passenger experience”) contains some good news. If all goes well, it will be possible once again to take a train along the old 75-mile cross-country route between Oxford and Cambridge, rather than taking the 120-mile detour via London, where the traveller has to change stations as well as trains. If all goes well, it will happen by 2030. |
| Verney Junction is a good place to contemplate the prospect. It sits on the line between Bicester and Bletchley and no trains have called here for a very long time. The platforms of purple brick have almost vanished under a topping of bramble and weeds. In the hollow between them, rusting rails, mottled with lichen and half-obscured by shrubbery, stretch straight towards the horizon in either direction. | Verney Junction is a good place to contemplate the prospect. It sits on the line between Bicester and Bletchley and no trains have called here for a very long time. The platforms of purple brick have almost vanished under a topping of bramble and weeds. In the hollow between them, rusting rails, mottled with lichen and half-obscured by shrubbery, stretch straight towards the horizon in either direction. |
| Other routes joined “the Varsity Line” here – though did people ever call it that? Striking off to the north-west a branch ran to Banbury; east of the station another line curved south to Aylesbury. | Other routes joined “the Varsity Line” here – though did people ever call it that? Striking off to the north-west a branch ran to Banbury; east of the station another line curved south to Aylesbury. |
| Their traces are hard to find. Earthworks shown on a 30-year-old Ordnance Survey map seem to have disappeared into a flat brown field. A sign on a farm track warns travellers to “Stop, Look and Listen” before they cross, otherwise only the rudiments of the main line have survived: rails, ballast, slippery wooden sleepers, the rail-holders cast with their date and owner’s name in the iron: “1956 BR”. Everything that was picturesque and interesting – the name-boards, the platform benches, the signal posts, the waiting rooms, the shouting porter – has disappeared. “My name is Verney, junction of junctions; look on my works, ye mighty …” and so on. | Their traces are hard to find. Earthworks shown on a 30-year-old Ordnance Survey map seem to have disappeared into a flat brown field. A sign on a farm track warns travellers to “Stop, Look and Listen” before they cross, otherwise only the rudiments of the main line have survived: rails, ballast, slippery wooden sleepers, the rail-holders cast with their date and owner’s name in the iron: “1956 BR”. Everything that was picturesque and interesting – the name-boards, the platform benches, the signal posts, the waiting rooms, the shouting porter – has disappeared. “My name is Verney, junction of junctions; look on my works, ye mighty …” and so on. |
| I first came here by accident 25 years ago. The Verney Arms was open then and the walls inside had photographs of the junction as it had once been. I recognised the name from my childhood – it featured in my older brother’s railway books like Ozymandias, as an example of exotica and hubris. Trains of London’s Metropolitan Railway had once travelled the 50 miles to Verney from Baker Street. Some trains included a Pullman carriage that served breakfast and tea. | I first came here by accident 25 years ago. The Verney Arms was open then and the walls inside had photographs of the junction as it had once been. I recognised the name from my childhood – it featured in my older brother’s railway books like Ozymandias, as an example of exotica and hubris. Trains of London’s Metropolitan Railway had once travelled the 50 miles to Verney from Baker Street. Some trains included a Pullman carriage that served breakfast and tea. |
| When London Transport took over the Metropolitan in 1933, Verney became its northern outpost, a bracingly rural terminus for a line that had its origins in the sulphurous tunnels of the capital. Lack of traffic closed this service three years later. As John Betjeman wrote for his 1973 documentary Metro-Land, “In those wet fields the railway didn’t pay/The Metro stops at Amersham today”. | When London Transport took over the Metropolitan in 1933, Verney became its northern outpost, a bracingly rural terminus for a line that had its origins in the sulphurous tunnels of the capital. Lack of traffic closed this service three years later. As John Betjeman wrote for his 1973 documentary Metro-Land, “In those wet fields the railway didn’t pay/The Metro stops at Amersham today”. |
| That wasn’t the end for Verney. Trains on the Oxford-Cambridge line continued to stop and exchange passengers and parcels with the Banbury branch. Verney Junction itself produced almost no traffic. A pub and six houses at most, it was entirely a creation of the railways, taking its name from the local landowner, Sir Harry Verney, who as a leading investor in the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway was keen to promote train travel across the county. (Some streak of immodesty ran in the family. Thanks to his naval-officer son, Mount Verney, Sir Harry Peak and the Sir Harry Range all rise proudly above the clouds in British Columbia.) | That wasn’t the end for Verney. Trains on the Oxford-Cambridge line continued to stop and exchange passengers and parcels with the Banbury branch. Verney Junction itself produced almost no traffic. A pub and six houses at most, it was entirely a creation of the railways, taking its name from the local landowner, Sir Harry Verney, who as a leading investor in the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway was keen to promote train travel across the county. (Some streak of immodesty ran in the family. Thanks to his naval-officer son, Mount Verney, Sir Harry Peak and the Sir Harry Range all rise proudly above the clouds in British Columbia.) |
| In the 1960s, the great railway shrinkage started in earnest. In 1961, the branch to Banbury was cut back to Buckingham. In 1964, the truncated Buckingham line went too. Verney Junction had lost its reason to be, but it still went on being until 1967, when passenger trains were withdrawn from the Oxford–Bletchley and Bedford–Cambridge sections of the Varsity Line. The reasons are unclear – the closures weren’t proposed by the Beeching report. Perhaps it had never been particularly well used throughout its whole length – the timetable for 1910 shows only three through trains a day, each covering the 75 miles in two-and-half hours. | In the 1960s, the great railway shrinkage started in earnest. In 1961, the branch to Banbury was cut back to Buckingham. In 1964, the truncated Buckingham line went too. Verney Junction had lost its reason to be, but it still went on being until 1967, when passenger trains were withdrawn from the Oxford–Bletchley and Bedford–Cambridge sections of the Varsity Line. The reasons are unclear – the closures weren’t proposed by the Beeching report. Perhaps it had never been particularly well used throughout its whole length – the timetable for 1910 shows only three through trains a day, each covering the 75 miles in two-and-half hours. |
| Not a fast line therefore, nor, despite a name that suggests its locomotives came wrapped in college scarves, a particularly fashionable one. Oxford University’s railway club, for example, never seems to have used the line for its excursions, though probably because the Oxbridge trains lacked a restaurant car. The club, founded in the 1920s, included bright young things such as Evelyn Waugh among its membership and aimed “to popularise the pleasures of drinking on trains at night”. | Not a fast line therefore, nor, despite a name that suggests its locomotives came wrapped in college scarves, a particularly fashionable one. Oxford University’s railway club, for example, never seems to have used the line for its excursions, though probably because the Oxbridge trains lacked a restaurant car. The club, founded in the 1920s, included bright young things such as Evelyn Waugh among its membership and aimed “to popularise the pleasures of drinking on trains at night”. |
| A favourite outing took members in full evening dress to Leicester onboard the Penzance to Aberdeen express. On the way they would drink and dine, and at Leicester change platforms quickly to catch the reverse express, Aberdeen to Penzance, back to Oxford, drinking and speechifying in the restaurant car all the way. | A favourite outing took members in full evening dress to Leicester onboard the Penzance to Aberdeen express. On the way they would drink and dine, and at Leicester change platforms quickly to catch the reverse express, Aberdeen to Penzance, back to Oxford, drinking and speechifying in the restaurant car all the way. |
| The plainer kind of train that made its slow progress eastwards through Verney Junction, Winslow and Bow Brickhill would have been no use for that kind of thing – or other kinds of thing. Freight carried on for a while, but that too ended in 1993. In a London-centric country, with a railway system that radiated from the capital like spokes in a wheel, the term “cross-country” began to seem like a provincial eccentricity. | The plainer kind of train that made its slow progress eastwards through Verney Junction, Winslow and Bow Brickhill would have been no use for that kind of thing – or other kinds of thing. Freight carried on for a while, but that too ended in 1993. In a London-centric country, with a railway system that radiated from the capital like spokes in a wheel, the term “cross-country” began to seem like a provincial eccentricity. |
| On its way between the two ancient universities, the Oxbridge line crossed every main line that went north – from the London termini at Marylebone, Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross – and yet very few people saw a use for it or missed it when it went. | On its way between the two ancient universities, the Oxbridge line crossed every main line that went north – from the London termini at Marylebone, Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross – and yet very few people saw a use for it or missed it when it went. |
| What made its revival possible was the economy of the countryside it travelled through. In 1995, East West Rail, a lobby group with its origins in Ipswich, began to push for a route from the container ports of East Anglia to the Midlands and the west that avoided the transit of passengers and freight through London. The involvement of local authorities and government departments turned the lobby into a consortium, developing a business case that in 2011 won government support. The region the line serves has the six fastest-growing cities in England. | What made its revival possible was the economy of the countryside it travelled through. In 1995, East West Rail, a lobby group with its origins in Ipswich, began to push for a route from the container ports of East Anglia to the Midlands and the west that avoided the transit of passengers and freight through London. The involvement of local authorities and government departments turned the lobby into a consortium, developing a business case that in 2011 won government support. The region the line serves has the six fastest-growing cities in England. |
| There have been setbacks as well as progress since, but Grayling’s plan to place infrastructure and train operation under a single management and ownership is seen locally as a promising sign of government commitment rather than a dangerous experiment in free market ideology, though of course it could be both. | There have been setbacks as well as progress since, but Grayling’s plan to place infrastructure and train operation under a single management and ownership is seen locally as a promising sign of government commitment rather than a dangerous experiment in free market ideology, though of course it could be both. |
| It has taken a long time – the political will that has given Scotland new railways has still to be found in England, other than for those that serve London. The first stretch of the Oxbridge line to reopen will be the western section from Bicester to Bletchley via Verney, with late 2019/early 2020 as the aspirational date. It may well be several years later. At any rate, trains will be speeding through Verney Junction again sometime before 2024 – speeding but not stopping, because the station will never reopen, having relinquished any reason to exist. | It has taken a long time – the political will that has given Scotland new railways has still to be found in England, other than for those that serve London. The first stretch of the Oxbridge line to reopen will be the western section from Bicester to Bletchley via Verney, with late 2019/early 2020 as the aspirational date. It may well be several years later. At any rate, trains will be speeding through Verney Junction again sometime before 2024 – speeding but not stopping, because the station will never reopen, having relinquished any reason to exist. |
| Think of Sir Harry and the Pullman train to Baker Street as you clatter by. | Think of Sir Harry and the Pullman train to Baker Street as you clatter by. |