ON BOARD: BLANKETS, MILK – AND AIRMEN
The Oxford-Witney-Fairford branch line closed in June 1962, almost 60 years ago. I marked the 50th anniversary of its closure in the June 2012 Steam World, and now it’s time to take a different look back at the place where my interest in GWR stations began.
The Late Michael Harris took a bold leap of faith in me when he took his proposal for a book on GWR Country Stations to the Ian Allan books committee for approval. It was to be based on a couple of articles I had written for Railway World magazine after my return to the company in 1977, following a decade of misery working in the advertisement department of a local newspaper.
At that time, most Ian Allan railway books were about locomotives, trains or railway history. Branch line histories were generally the preserve of smaller publishers and were usually small paperbacks, while any books about stations concentrated on major main line stations and London termini.
Was anyone really interested in little stations, many of which had been closed by Beeching in the 1960s if they weren’t already closed? Well, I was interested, and I guess my enthusiasm must have come across in those Railway World articles sufficiently to please Mike. Despite what those who know me might think, my interest in stations did not begin with the quirky house conversion that was Staines West. It began a couple of years later, in Gloucestershire in June 1964 (judging from the date stamp on the back of some photographs).
My parents were separated and my younger brother and I were away for a weekend with my father. Searching for a place for a picnic lunch, my father stopped the car in what he thought was a field entrance. It turned out to be the entrance to Fairford station, a sprawling but disused, terminus, intact apart from the loss of all its track. It was the sort of place kids love to explore. The doors were open or missing altogether. Rails, weighbridge and anything metal
