LMS Route: The Stratford upon Avon & Midland Junction
Railway - 'The Shakespeare Route'
In addition to the route map of the Stratford upon Avon
& Midland Junction Railway (SMJ) stations within the County of Warwickshire
we have provided below other links to pages relating to the SMJ and its
constituent companies. Our reason for doing this is because the SMJ was the
only railway, other than the Harborne Railway, to have its headquarters located
within the county. Whereas the Harborne Railway was the only railway which
operated entirely within the county and paid dividends to shareholders up to
grouping on 1st January 1923, it was operated from the outset by the London
& North Western Railway and as such had no specific character of its own.
The SMJ however, had two constituency companies operating within Warwickshire
with the Evesham, Redditch & Stratford-on-Avon Junction Railway
being totally within the county albeit being subservient to the East & West
Junction Railway (E&WJR). As the latter's headquarters were located at
Stratford upon Avon and as the headquarters of the Stratford upon Avon &
Midland Junction Railway were also based there, we have decided to provide
addition generic and non geographical information on the SMJ including that
relating to operations occurring in Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and
Oxfordshire.
Companies which operated the line within the
county:
East & West Junction Railway
Stratford & Midland Junction Railway
London Midland Scottish
Railway
British Railways (Midland Region)
British Railways (Western Region)
The Stratford Upon Avon & Midland Junction Railway
(SMJR) was one of Britain's more impoverished and least efficient little
railways, although on one or two occasions it came near to achieving greatness.
Its line ran across a largely empty, untouched portion of England visiting the
counties of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and a little of
Buckinghamshire. David Blasgrove notes in his book 'Warwickshire's Lost
Railways' that 'within the county of Warwickshire the railway had a route
mileage of 28 miles'. It only existed as the SMJR from 1909 to 1923.
Its origins lie in the amalgamation of four railway companies in 1909-10:
the Northampton & Banbury Junction Railway
(NBJR), authorised by an Act of Parliament on 9th July 1847, was originally
intended to run from Northampton to Cardiff. In the event only the section
between Blisworth (on the L&NWR main line, where it connected with
the L&NWR's Northampton Branch) and Cockley Brake Junction, some
five miles east of Banbury on the L&NWR's Buckingham Branch, was
built opening on 1st June 1872, a length of fifteen and quarter miles. Intended
to tap the ironstone deposits near Blisworth, it ran from Blisworth to Cockley
Brake Junction where a connection was made for Banbury.
the East & West Junction Railway (E&WJR),
authorised by an Act of Parliament on 23rd June 1864, to open a line from a
junction with the Northampton & Banbury Railway near Towcester to a
junction with the GWR's Honeybourne to Stratford-on-Avon line at Old
Stratford. The line opened in stages: from Fenny Compton to Kineton on 1st June
1871; and from Kineton to Stratford-upon-Avon on 1st July 1873. On the same day
as the Kineton to Stratford-upon-Avon opened the line was also extended
eastwards to join the NBJR near Towcester. Its earliest passenger
coaches were bought secondhand from the L&NWR, and ran for several
years in L&NWR livery before the company was able to find the money
to repaint them. To this route was added the Evesham, Redditch &
Stratford-on-Avon Junction Railway which was authorised on 5th August 1873.
However due financial difficulties it only opened from Stratford-upon-Avon to
Broom Junction, a length of seven and half miles, opening on 2nd June 1879. The
Easton Neston Mineral & Roade and Olney Junction Railway, which ran
from Easton Neston near Towcester to the Midland Railway main line at
Ravenstone Wood Junction near Olney, also connected with the L&NWR
main line at Roade.
The company ran services between Broom Junction,
Stratford-upon-Avon, and Banbury through Towcester to Blisworth and Olney and
fashioned itself as 'The Shakespeare route'. The Stratford-upon-Avon &
Midland Junction Railway came into being on 1st January 1909 and
consolidated these lines into a 67 mile long system stretching from Olney via
Towcester and Stratford to Broom and from Blisworth (for Northampton) to
Cockley Brake Junction (for Banbury Merton Street). The Chairman was Harry
Willmott and his son Russell Willmott was appointed both General Manager and
Engineer.
About the most exciting thing that ever happened to the
company was when in the early 1900s the Great Central Railway ran four
expresses a week for the benefit of Shakespeare enthusiasts during the tourist
season, from the junction with its main line at Woodford Hinton to
Stratford-upon-Avon. For much of the last quarter of the nineteenth century Sir
Edward Watkin's eye would occasionally turned toward the SMJ as a
possible way for the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway to
obtain its own line to Birmingham. The idea was that the Great Central
Railway would use the SMJ from Moreton Pinckney to Stratford and
then the North Warwickshire Railway from Stratford to Birmingham. This
plan however came to nothing when the Great Western gained control of
the North Warwickshire Railway in 1900.
On 1st January 1923 the SMJR was, with other railway
companies, grouped to form the London, Midland and Scottish Railway
(LMSR). The line was to become an important asset to the LMSR since it
provided a direct route, avoiding Birmingham, between the western line owned by
the former Midland Railway and the main line south of Bedford. Excursion
traffic used the route extensively between the First and Second World Wars.
The route
Once all the portions of the line came together on 1st
January 1909 (minus the Northampton & Banbury junction Railway which
was taken over the following year, the SMJR consisted of a main line
from Blisworth to Broom, with two branches: one from Towcester to Ravenstone
Wood Junction, Olney and the other from Cockley Brake Junction. The SMJ
had its main use as a connecting link for east-west traffic between the railway
companies it intersected:
the Midland Railway — as already described
above
the London and North Western Railway at Blisworth
the
Great Central Railway (GCR) at Woodford Halse.¹
the
Great Western Railway at Fenny Compton and again at Stratford upon
Avon
¹. Soon after the Great Central Railway's London
Extension was built in 1899 through passenger coaches were provided between
London Marylebone and Stratford-upon-Avon; later a slip coach was used on the
service.
The line was single track throughout apart from passing
loops: the countryside was undulating, and there were frequent changes of
gradient and sharp curves, making it difficult to work for train crews. The
track itself, until taken over by the LMSR, was mostly secondhand;
because of this, the line was dubbed the Slow Mouldy and Jolty Railway
by travellers. The railway owned 13 locomotives which themselves were old, and
since they proved incompatible with the LMSR's modernisation scheme they
had all been scrapped by 1931. The Edge Hill Light Railway, which began
working to ferry ironstone in 1922, and closed in 1946, ran from Burton Dassett
sidings, west of Fenny Compton.
Operating
The line's original raison d’etre (that of conveying
ironstone to the ironworks of South Wales) was ended when cheap Spanish
ironstone ore displaced that from the Northamptonshire quarries. As can be
expected in these circumstances, this brought about financial problems, and for
a time in the 1870s the E&WJR was in the hands of the receiver. By
1911, however, the line was starting to show a reasonable profit. Lias
limestone was conveyed from the Ettington Lime Works; but from the early 20th
century it became important as a through route for freight of all kinds between
the West of England and London. One such freight working, which the line became
synonymous with, was the express banana train between Avonmouth Dock and St
Pancras.
Passenger services on the SMJR were generally sparse,
with often just three or four trains operating each day. As part of the
LMSR's experimentation in reducing the cost of running branch line
services, experiments were carried out on the SMJR over several months
during 1932 with a Ro-Railer, a bus converted to run on rails. This experiment
proved to be a failure and the service was withdrawn in June 1932.
The rural nature of the route meant that the railway always
struggled to be profitable, a state of affairs best illustrated by past
suggestions that the payment of dividends was closely linked to the amount of
hay the railway could harvest from the land on either side of the route. The
withdrawal of passenger traffic from the route because of road competition was
therefore inevitable with passenger services between Broom and Stratford on
Avon being suspended on 16th June 1947. The intermediate stations at Binton and
Bidford were also closed temporarily but on 23rd May 1949 their closure was
announced as permanent. On the 5th April 1952 regular passenger services
between Blisworth and Stratford on Avon also ceased although because goods
traffic still ran along the route the line was frequently visited by railway
enthusiast specials. The honour for organising the very last passenger train to
visit Stratford on Avon fell to the Stephenson Locomotive Society (SLS) whose
special on 24th April 1965 finally brought down the curtain.
On the 12th June 1960 the construction of the new junction
with the former GWR Stratford to Honeybourne route, together with the upgrading
of the junction between the former GWR Oxford to Birmingham line at Fenny
Compton, meant that traffic for South-West Wales via the Stratford on Avon to
Broom route no longer needed to utilise the section of line to Broom. This
resulted in the Stratford on Avon to Broom route being closed on the same day
although the two intermediate stations' goods yards had closed on 7th March
1960. The goods yards of the intermediate stations between Blisworth and
Stratford on Avon were variously closed during 1963 and 1964. During the same
period the South Wales ironstone traffic also declined which meant that the
remaining SMJR route was finally closed on 5th July 1965, except for the
section between Burton Dassett sidings and Fenny Compton which remained open to
service the Ministry of Defence establishment.
Closures
Routes
Broom to Stratford-upon-Avon - 16th June 1947
closed to passenger traffic
Blisworth to Towcester - 2nd July 1951
closed to passenger traffic
Blisworth to Cockley Brake Junction -
October 1951 closed to all traffic
Stratford to Ravenstone Wood
Junction - 7th April 1952 closed to passenger traffic
Stations
Bidford-on-Avon* 22nd February 1885 - 25th May
1949
Binton 22nd February 1885 - 23rd May 1949
Stratford-on-Avon June
1875 - 7th April 1952
Ettington 1st July 1873 - 7th April 1952
Kineton
1st June 1871 - 7th April 1952
Burton Dassett Halt** 1 June 1871 - May
1946
Fenny Compton 1st June 1871 - 7th April 1952
* Originally named
Bidford until 1st July 1909.
** Originally named Warwick Road until closure
in June 1873; reopened and renamed Burton Dassett Platform on 1st December 1909
until closure by July 1912; reopened and renamed after 1933.
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Much of the information provided on this and other linked
pages has been derived from books written by: Arthur Jordan The Stratford
upon Avon and Midland Junction Railway published by OPC; JM Dunn's The
Stratford upon Avon & Midland Junction Railway published by The Oakwood
Press; Messrs Preston Hendry & Powell Hendry in An Historical Survey of
Selected LMS Stations Volume One published by OPC; RC Riley and Bill
Simpson in their book A History of the Stratford-Upon-Avon and Midland
Junction Railway published by Lamplight Publications; David Blasgrove in
his book 'Warwickshire's Lost Railways' published by Stenlake Publishing which
has a brief illustrated overview of some of the stations; Eric Tonks 'The
Ironstone Quarries of the Midlands: History, Operation and Railways'
published by Runpast Publications; and finally Geoffrey Kingscott's Lost
Railways of Warwickshire published by Countryside Books which has a section
dedicated to the SMJR with 'Now and Then' photographs. We would like to express
our thanks to the members of the SMJ Society for use of their information and
images, in particular the late John Jennings whose contribution can be seen on
many of our SMJ pages.
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