Cholsey to Wallingford Heritage Line. A look around and a train ride. A bit of drone footage

Sunday 28th May 2023.
Drone and photos at 22:12
Drone only video. • Cholsey to Wallingford...
Wallingford railway station is a railway station serving the town of Wallingford. It is now part of a preserved railway.
On 2 July 1866, the Wallingford railway branch line was opened by the Wallingford and Watlington Railway from a junction with the Great Western Railway main line at Moulsford (known as Wallingford Road until that date) to Wallingford, where a station was constructed on the south side of Wantage Road (now Station Road), at grid reference SU602895 (51.6017°N 1.1320°W). The line never proceeded beyond, so did not reach the second-named town in its title.
For such a short line and a small station, the location was well patronised by commercial freight customers. The original Wallingford creamery was taken over by the Co-op Wholesale Society, and had its own private siding access from the goods yard to allow access for milk trains, which then took product to London until the late 1950s. There was also a Malting plant with rail access.
Passenger services were withdrawn in 1959 and general freight services finished in 1965. In 1969 the line was shortened by 500 metres (1,600 ft), back to the location of the malting plant on Hithercroft Road, which was the only remaining goods customer. When traffic from the maltings stopped in 1981 the line was closed and British Rail removed the junction at Cholsey.
A new Wallingford station was built on the south side of St. Johns Road, at grid reference SU600891, when the line reopened as a heritage railway.
Richard Beeching commonly known as Dr Beeching, was a physicist and engineer who for a short but very notable time was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the early 1960s for his report The Reshaping of British Railways, commonly referred to as The Beeching Report, which led to far-reaching changes in the railway network, popularly known as the Beeching Axe.
As a result of the report, just over 4,000 route miles (6,400 kilometres) were removed from the system on cost and efficiency grounds.
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