‘Direct’ it may have been, but it was little more than a minor secondary route. In his book on the line, The Banbury and Cheltenham Railway, 1887-1962 (OPC Railprint, 1978), Jim Russell calls it ‘one of the GWR’s longest branch lines’. The Banbury & Cheltenham Direct Railway was, however, cut through a scenic part of England, and 60 years after its closure it still has a substantial following and even its own Facebook page.
From Banbury, trains to Cheltenham first headed in the wrong direction, south-east, up the GWR main line to Kings Sutton, where the B&CDR branched west through Adderbury, Bloxham and Hook Norton, to the substantial market town of Chipping Norton. Continuing south-westwards, it crossed the Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton line at Kingham. It then served the picturesque Cotswold towns of Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water before tackling the more remote hill country through Notgrove to a junction with the line from Marlborough and Andover at Andoversford, and into Cheltenham, where trains terminated at St James station. The total length of the BCDR was 47 miles and it opened in 1887.
I never knew the line when it was operational and, except for the section retained for goods between Kings Sutton
