Here's another comment from 1910, this time Railway Times of 13 August 1910 reporting "the 150th half-yearly general meeting of the proprietors" of GWR. The chairman (Viscount Churchill GCVO), in his address summarising the report of accounts and activities for the half year said, of the Ashendon to Aynho Railway: "This, as you know, generally improves our facilities for dealing with the large volume of our northern traffic. In fact, had this line not been made, it would have been necessary for us to have quadrupled our line via Oxford, at a far greater cost."

So GWR assessed the cost of land for a whole new railway (18 miles through nothing much) as less than the amount needed to widen an existing one, plus civils.  Even then Oxford was an expensive place to build!

 

Easier than double tracking St Bureaux to Saltash 

 

Widening the Thames bridges?.....

 

Chris - I suspect you may be looking for https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/r18093.html

 

Many years ago, I made a proposal for this with grade separation that was largely dismissed, which followed on from a Didcot grade separation that received a more favourable approval.  I have tried Deep Search on this platform to no avail.

Maybe Chris From Nailsea could be of assistance with finding my old post.

 
It has sometimes struck me that this would have been (and might still be) a good idea. Being no civil engineer, sitting in a train between the two it strikes me that it might not be too much of a challenge, as there does not seem too much built development hard up to the boundary of the current running lines. Having the intermediate stations on one pair of lines only, freeing up the other pair for through trains?

Another bottleneck not too far away to open out (but I think more of a challenge) would be to quadruple Reading West triangle (or however the revised shape is now named!) to Southcote junction. What do forum members who have more "real" knowledge think?

 
Thanks for this.

Mark

 
It was suggested in the Westminster Gazette of 12 April 1910 that the construction of the Ashendon to Aynho line, together with the Great Central and Great Western Joint Line, gave GWR the same extra capacity as quadrupling through Oxford almost to Banbury. Thus it is unlikely they would do it later than that, or before they had done the main line into Didcot (1892). By then the possibility of the GW/GCR route was presumably already known about, so the window for ever quadrupling Didcot-Oxford narrows to little or nothing.

 
Did GWR ever form the intention to quadruple track Oxford to Didcot? I'm thinking of the way that line increasingly sat at the centre of a set of converging lines - at first, to the south, from two directions on the GW main line itself - and the Didcot Newbury and Southampton line then came onto the scene - and then to the north, the lines to Rugby Birmingham and then to Worcester and to Wolverhampton - and later to Fairford, and also the Banbury to Woodford Halse link. This collection joined by a double track railway.

Perhaps the relief of this stretch by the building of the 1910 line via Bicester took the focus elsewhere from any ambition to quadruple the track south to Didcot.

Was there an intention though? Plans, or perhaps an early intention to route the Great Western Main Line itself via Oxford?

Turning to the present day: the relieving line via Thame long closed, a busier network ... and there's Oxford, still connected to Didcot by a double track railway with three 'Inconvenient' intermediate stations, no offence intended. There must be a ghost of the 'If only' here, and also, how those stations avoided being zapped I don't know.

Mark