The Brill Tramway, also known as the Quainton Tramway, Wotton Tramway, Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad and Metropolitan Railway Brill Branch, was a six-mile (10 km) rail line in the Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, England. It was privately built in 1871 by the 3rd Duke of Buckingham as a horse tram line to transport goods between his lands around Wotton House and the national railway network. Lobbying from residents of the nearby town of Brill led to the line's extension to Brill and conversion to passenger use in early 1872. Two locomotives were bought for the line, but as it had been designed and built with horses in mind, services were very slow; trains travelled at an average speed of only 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h).
In 1883, the Duke of Buckingham announced plans to upgrade the route to main line railway standards and extend the line to Oxford, creating a through route from Aylesbury to Oxford. If built, the line would have been the shortest route between Aylesbury and Oxford at the time. Despite the backing of the wealthy Ferdinand de Rothschild, investors were deterred by the costly tunnelling proposed, and the Duke was unable to raise sufficient funds. In 1888 a cheaper scheme was proposed, in which the line would be built to a lower standard and wind around hills to avoid tunnelling. In anticipation of this, the line was named the Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad. Although the existing line was upgraded in 1894, the extension to Oxford was never built. Instead, the operation of the Brill Tramway was taken over by London's Metropolitan Railway, and Brill became one of their two north-western termini. The line was rebuilt a second time in 1910, and more advanced locomotives were introduced, allowing trains to run faster.
In 1933, the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership and became the Metropolitan line of London Transport. As a result, the Brill Tramway became a part of the London Underground. The management of London Transport aimed to concentrate on electrification and the improvement of passenger services in London, and saw little possibility that the former Metropolitan Railway routes in Buckinghamshire could ever become viable passenger routes. In 1935 all services on the Brill Tramway were withdrawn, and the line was closed.[1] The infrastructure of the route was dismantled and sold shortly afterwards. Very little trace of the Brill Tramway remains, other than the former junction station at Quainton Road, now the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.[2]
Stations
When the line was opened in 1871–72, the stations were 6 in high crude earth banks, held in place by wooden planks. In 1894, in preparation for the Oxford extension, Waddesdon, Westcott, Wotton and Brill stations were provided with buildings containing a booking office, waiting rooms and toilets, while Wood Siding station was equipped with a small waiting room "with shelf and drawer". Church Siding station was not included in the rebuilding, and ceased to be listed in the timetable at this time.
Quainton Road
Quainton Road originally consisted of two separate stations, one on the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and one on the Wotton Tramway. The only physical link between the two lines was a turntable. Before 1895, the station was referred to as both "Quainton Road" and "Quainton" indiscriminately. Between 1895 and 1897 the Metropolitan Railway repositioned the station building from the west to the east side of the former A&BR line, freeing space for a junction between the two lines to be built. The section of the station serving the Aylesbury line remained open to passengers until 4 March 1963, and to goods traffic until 4 July 1966. In 1969 the Quainton Road Society was formed to preserve the station. The station, along with former wartime emergency food depots and sections of siding preserved as a demonstration line, is now the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. Between 1999 and 2000, the original Buckinghamshire Railway's Oxford terminus of Oxford Rewley Road railway station was dismantled and reassembled alongside the existing station buildings at Quainton Road.
Quainton Road is still connected to the railway network and used by occasional special passenger services,
Waddesdon
Locomotives
The first two locomotives operated on the line were 0-4-0 single-cylinder geared steam locomotives of the traction engine type built by Aveling and Porter, works numbers 807 and 846. A crankshaft drove a 3 ft flywheel which in turn drove chains attached to the wheels. They were delivered in 1872, and numbered 1 & 2. Following the 1894 authorisation of the rebuilt line to operate as a railway, both locomotives failed to meet minimum speed requirements for railway operations. Both were sold on 23 September 1895 to the Heyford Iron Company in Northamptonshire. No. 2 was found to have a faulty boiler, and was used as a source of spares for No. 1. By 1922, the Heyford Iron Company had developed a brickworks, and No 1 was used for haulage there until the closure of the brickworks in 1940. In the 1950s No. 1 was restored by London Transport at Neasden Depot, and was transferred to the Clapham Museum of British Transport on 19 January 1957.[4] It was displayed there until March 1973, when it was transferred to the London Transport Museum. Since then it has been displayed at the London Transport Museum and at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre at Quainton Road.
The next two locomotives were manufactured by W. G. Bagnall: Buckingham, 0-4-0ST, works number 16, built 1876, and Wotton, 0-4-0T, works number 120, built 1877. They were unusual in having "reversed" inside cylinders, which drove the front axle. Bagnall used a single numbering scheme for all their products; although the locomotives had the works numbers 16 and 120, they were in fact the first and third locomotives made by the company. Buckingham was hired, not owned; it was returned to Bagnall's in February 1878. Wotton was sold in around 1894.
Carriages and wagons
Details of the carriages and wagons used in the very early years of the Tramway are uncertain. By 1879 the company operated a fleet of nine four-wheeled goods wagons, some with 9 in and some with 11 in high sides. All nine wagons were fitted with dumb buffers, and as a consequence did not comply with Railway Clearing House standards and could not be used on other lines. When it was necessary to run through traffic from the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway onto the Tramway via the Quainton Road turntable, appropriate wagons and trucks were hired from the GWR or London and North Western Railway. It is also known that a passenger tram carriage was owned by the Tramway by March 1873. This passenger carriage seated 16–20 passengers and although it had been designed as a horse tram, was fitted with buffers allowing it to be used in trains. By 1878 (when it is recorded as being repaired) the company also owned a passenger carriage divided into a third-class compartment, a second-class compartment and a luggage compartment.
In 1895, two new passenger carriages, each accommodating 40 passengers, were bought by the Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad Company from the Bristol Wagon & Carriage Works as part of the programme of improvements in anticipation of the extension to Oxford. On 4 October 1899 the MR loaned the O&AT an eight-wheeled 70 seat passenger carriage. Following the takeover of the O&AT by the MR, goods services were operated by a fleet of five eight-wheeled carriages built in 1865–66. Two cattle wagons were added to the line's stock in the 1920s.
Further reading
External links
- Newsreel footage of the last day of operations at British Pathé
- Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, based at Quainton Road station