Setting the scene
Entry posted by Pugsley
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The next project, now with Chittle well and truly out of the way, is an incursion into Southern Region territory, with a might-have-been line between Bagshot and Woking.
The story goes something like this:
The line was built in the early 1920s as an alternative to the light railway proposed between Sunningdale and Woking, via Chobham, which was never built. The line provided a direct connection from Ascot and Bracknell to Woking by branching off at Bagshot, and running through Lightwater, West End, Bisley and Knaphill before joining the main line again near St Johns.
The line was electrified and the layout of the station modified in 1967, at the same time as the rest of the South-West mainline to Bournemouth was electrified. At the same time the station was remodelled to accommodate the new oil terminal, with a new station building and access built on the former goods yard. The branch line to Bisley camp was also lifted at this time.
The line was closed to passengers in 1976, after the canal bridge near St Johns was weakened in a dredging accident and had to be demolished, with the line beyond West End being lifted. Oil trains continued to the local fuel distributor until 1984, and the loop was retained so that aggregates trains, now coming from the Reading direction, could continue to reverse into the terminal, as the terminal has no run-round facilities. The stone trains are routed through Bracknell, and access the line to Bagshot through the chord at South Ascot.
A large expansion in the town, and the progressive nature of the Network SouthEast sector at the time lead to the station having it's passenger service reinstated in 1988. Luckily the 3rd rail equipment had been left, albeit isolated, when the passenger service ceased in the 1970s.
The station was originally composed of an island platform, with the main station building, on a now mostly demolished platform, connected by a footbridge. The far platform road has been filled in, and it is in this space that the new station building has been constructed, with the rest of the platform left as a bay.
One of the former main lines is extended slightly to act as a headshunt for the run-round and the other main line now forms part of the goods loop. The far platform line (which is now the bay) originally continued to Bisley Camp (hence the name Bisley Junction - Bisley village, further down the line, only had a halt. Evidence of this lines embankment can just be made out, but has mostly been obliterated by the housing development. With the expansion in the town, the oil terminal has started to receive trains again, and another local industry (office furniture) now receives bright steel in vans from the UK and coated steel from abroad.
The station at West End is marked by the blue dot on the map, the Stone terminal by the purple. There is one additional station on the line, at Lightwater.
Trackplan is more or less like this, and I hope the notes above help to make some sense of it:
The inspiration for the layout comes from several sources, St Denys, Chessington South and Addiscombe. I've got this kind of thing planned for the terminus end of the layout:
http://neillwood3163.fotopic.net/p51672801.html
And that's about as far as its got, save for one try of the templot plans on the board, and a point and a bit (about 1/4 of the way through the second point :mrgreen: )
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