Rail (UK)

East West Rail

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British Rail closed its line between Oxford and Cambridge east of Bedford in 1968, at a time when roads were providing stiff competitio­n.

The closed section ran eastwards through Willington, over the East Coast Main Line at Sandy, then through Potton, Gamlingay and Trumpingto­n to run into Cambridge from the south.

From Bedford, passenger trains ran westwards to Bletchley. Only freight ventured further west through Verney Junction, passing Claydon LNE Junction (where a freight line ran to Aylesbury), under the Chiltern line at Bicester to reach Oxford.

Passengers returned to the western section in 1987 when British Rail’s Network SouthEast reopened the route between Oxford and Bicester Town. After BR’s privatisat­ion, Chiltern Railways upgraded the line, adding a link to its line towards London Marylebone. This enabled Chiltern Railways to run LondonOxfo­rd trains from 2015.

After years of lobbying from local councils, starting in Ipswich in the mid-1990s, the Department for Transport adopted in the early 2010s the scheme to reopen the wider line. By the time it created the East West Railway Company in 2018, the task was to refurbish the mothballed section from Bicester to Bletchley (including BR’s 1962 viaduct over the West Coast Main Line), upgrade BletchleyB­edford, and find a route from Bedford to Cambridge before building it.

Current physical work concentrat­es on Bicester-Bedford while the eastern arm is being developed. This gives the prospect of a line from Oxford to Cambridge providing interchang­es into the Chiltern, West Coast, Midland and East Coast Main Lines.

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