Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 26, 2010

Wood Siding railway station was a small halt in Bernwood Forest, Buckinghamshire, England. It was opened in 1871 as a terminus of a short horse-drawn tramway to assist the transport of goods from and around the Duke of Buckingham's extensive estates in Buckinghamshire and to connect the Duke's estates to the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway at Quainton Road. A lobbying campaign by residents of the town of Brill led to the tramway being converted for passenger use and extended a short distance beyond Wood Siding to Brill railway station in 1872, becoming known as the Brill Tramway. Cheaply built and ungraded, and using poor quality locomotives, services on the line were very slow, initially limited to a speed of 5 miles per hour (8 km/h). In the 1890s it was planned to extend the tramway to Oxford, but the scheme was abandoned. Instead, the operation of the line was taken over by the Metropolitan Railway in 1899. Between 1908 and 1910 the station was completely rebuilt on a bridge over the newly built Chiltern Main Line of the Great Western Railway, which passed directly beneath the station. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership and became the Metropolitan Line of London Transport. As a result, Wood Siding became a station on the London Underground network, despite being over 40 miles (60 km) from central London. London Transport's new management aimed to move away from goods services to concentrate on passenger services; as the line served a very lightly populated rural area, the management of London Transport believed it very unlikely that it could ever be made viable, and Wood Siding was closed, along with the rest of the line, from 30 November 1935. Although all infrastructure associated with the station was removed in 1936, the remains of the bridge which supported the station were not demolished and are still in place.

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