Woodspeen: Former Stockcross & Bagnor railway station

Image: © Nigel Cox Taken: 3 Jan 2010

Fifty years to the day, bar one, since the last passenger train passed here on the Lambourn Valley Railway on 4 January 1960, the raised area on the left of the former trackbed is the platform and all that remains of the former Stockcross & Bagnor railway station that opened in 1898. Even in Victorian times it was difficult to see the purpose of the station. Stockcross is about a mile away up a hill accessed by a narrow lane, while Bagnor is also about a mile away across the valley of the River Lambourn in the opposite direction and accessed only by a footpath, otherwise about two miles by road. Woodspeen is and was only a hamlet with a dozen or so residences. Railway traffic was always light and the station was unmanned from 1905 onwards and redesignated as a halt in 1934. Although the whole line to Lambourn closed in 1960 to regular passenger and freight traffic, occasional military goods trains for RAF Welford used the track until 1973. The rails were eventually lifted around 1976.

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