Station's Between Reading Didcot
Great Britain 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster Mapping Extracts © Crown copyright Ordnance Survey. All Rights Reserved. Educational licence 100045616.
Many years ago when I first started showing photos on Geograph I took photos of my local station at Cholsey thinking it needed recording fro the future. Roll on around ten years and it was lucky I did because electrification came through and all the stations changed. I also decided to visit all the local village stations at Goring, Pangbourne and Tilehurst which was the last one I got to and just in time to get photos of the old Victorian Foot Bridge before it was demolished. I will start at Tilehurst and show what it looked like before electrification and how the stations looked after the electrification
I had intended to visit Tilehurst for a while but by the time I visited I found the old Victorian Loading shed had been removed and a new footbridge was in its place and nearly finished. The first photo by Ben Brooksbank shows the station looking down from the old footbridge, the second by Chris Wood a little further along shows platform one and the loading shed a bit further along. The third by Graham Horn shows the loading shed. The photos after that show the platforms and old and new footbridges
The reason I visited was to get a photo of the old original footbridge before it was removed two stations in the section have footbridges
The new bridge was well on the way to be completed
Pangbourne station has a tunnel running under the lines that is virtually unchanged from the time it was built. The one thing I noticed was there was no platform on the fast line but I have since found out that there used to be and the first two of Ben Brooksbanks photos below tends to back this up. Also if you look at the approach to the tunnel entrance in 6th photo you can see there was a platform there.
The fast line with the platforms showing in Ben Brooksbanks photos and in the later ones you can make out the area the platforms were. The wall was built to block off the access but you can see there is a larger gap between the line and where the platform was compared to the platforms used now
I have not been back to get photos of the stations with the electrification in place but Peter Trimmings and Nigel Thomson have. I will get down there one of these days
Next along the line is Goring Station and I took a few photos before the place changed back in 2009. The only real change to then was the removal of building on platform one when the 125's started running on the line
the views up and down the line I doubt have changed much either
But it was the old Victorian over bridge I wanted to record. Either around that time the did some restoration work on it but this was to no avail because electrification was coming and the old bridge was torn down which I found out one was in 2015. Since then I had not been back to update my photos
Lucky Chris Wood and Nigel Thomson both have taken some of what has changed
The next station in the article is that of Cholsey one I have watched change over the years and the first one I covered when I started with Geograph.
Cholsey station is another with a tunnel running under the railway lines for people to access the platforms. There used to be a side entrance where people with prams or wheelchairs could go and be escorted across the railway lines, unfortunately too many people were killed while crossing unattended not only here but other stations so it was closed. Cholsey also used to have a branch line that ran to Wallingford that is locally called the Bunk Line but that was closed back in 1961 under Beeching. the line is now a preserved railway operated by Cholsey & Wallingfrod Railway.
In 2015 the Electrification of the main line came through Cholsey and everything changed and not for the good of the looks of the station either
I have decided to finish this article here because the next station along the line is Didcot and a bit like Reading I think I could write an article on it alone
Great Britain 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster Mapping Extracts © Crown copyright Ordnance Survey. All Rights Reserved. Educational licence 100045616.