Going back*
(with apologies to The Byrds)
I’ve never been a fan of going back to places I knew in my youth. I usually find that they’ve changed beyond recognition or they just aren’t how I remember them. I’m particularly fearful of going back to old railway haunts on the GWR, and I’m deliberately avoiding the rebuilt Reading General station, as I know I won’t recognise it. However, I recently had an evening appointment in Swindon, and I decided to visit a couple of stations on the way. When the day came, the weather was gloomy, so I limited myself to just one stop, at Kings Sutton, near Banbury. The first time I went there was in August 1965, on a Gloucester Crosscountry (Class 119) DMU from Oxford. Its station buildings were a more elaborate version of the Banbury & Cheltenham Direct Railway’s design the same basic shape and style but with lots more stonework to give it a mock Elizabethan look. Kings Sutton was listed for closure in the Beeching report, but by the time of my original visit, it had been reduced to an unstaffed halt, presumably because total closure and replacement by bus services was impractical. Take a drive through the village and you can still see why. Today, Kings Sutton is served by GWR and Chiltern Trains, and the line remains busy with through-express services and freight, including container trains and trains of cars for export from the Midlands to the south coast. There’s no trace of its handsome Up-side station building, but the original shelter on the Down platform survives, the last B&CDR building in existence. The lattice GWR footbridge was replaced by a foot crossing with warning lights, and more recently by a modern footbridge. The visit wasn’t quite as disappointing as I’d expected. The character has changed a little because more trees have grown, but doing a bit of careful investigation can be fun. I found the torched-off base of the footbridge and noticed the remains of the row of Scots Pines that so often mark a GWR station approach. A nearby house has one of the station lamps, complete with a name-sign. On that original visit I had seen plenty of steam, including a ‘WD’ 2‑8‑0 which clanked through the station running light engine to Banbury, and I remember watching lizards scampering about on some old iron fixing plates which had been warmed by the sun. The place is still recognisable but I struggled to cast my mind back to how it was. It did prompt me to go out again the next day and look at some other GWR stations on the Cotswold line, and in the Thames Valley. More of that another time, perhaps. These small wayside GWR stations have always fascinated me and I’ve been tempted to model one -perhaps, Handborough, Aynho or Kings Sutton. However, wayside stations on main lines take up a lot of space. Tony Wright’s superb ‘Little Bytham’ is a case in point. A small, almost insignificant, wayside station on the ECML, yet to do it justice requires a purpose-built structure to house it. Perhaps I should send Paul Lunn a couple of real track plans of places that interest me, and see what the ‘Master of Compression’ can do with them… The lyric of Goffin and King’s Going Back, as recorded by The Byrds, is a reflection on the passing of childhood and includes the lyric ‘No more electric trains’. It was changed to a more feminine subject in Dusty Springfield’s cover version.