Quainton Road railway station served the area of Quainton, in Buckinghamshire, England; it is sited from London. Built by the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, it was the result of pressure from the 3rd Duke of Buckingham to route the railway near his home at Wotton House and to open a railway station at the nearest point to it. Serving a relatively underpopulated area, Quainton Road was a crude railway station, described as "extremely primitive".
It became a junction station in 1871 with the opening of the line to Brill. The Metropolitan Railway took over the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway in 1891. In 1899, Quainton Road became a main line station with the opening of the Great Central Railway London extension.
In 1933, the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership to become the Metropolitan line of the London Passenger Transport Board's London Underground, including Quainton Road. The LPTB aimed to move away from freight operations and saw no way in which the rural parts of the MR could be made into viable passenger routes. In 1935, the Brill Tramway was closed. From 1936, underground trains were withdrawn north of Aylesbury, leaving the London and North Eastern Railway (successor to the GCR) as the only operator using the station, although underground services were restored for a short period in the 1940s. In 1963, stopping passenger services were withdrawn, but fast passenger trains continued to pass through. In 1966, the line was closed to passenger traffic and local goods trains ceased using the station. The line through the station was singled and used by occasional freight trains only.
In 1969, the Quainton Road Society was formed with the aim of preserving the station. In 1971, it absorbed the London Railway Preservation Society, taking over its collection of historic railway equipment including many locomotives, and passenger and non-passenger rolling stock. The station was fully restored and reopened as a museum, the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. In addition to the locomotives, stock, and original station buildings, the museum has also acquired the former station and a London Transport building from , both of which have been reassembled on the site. Although no scheduled trains pass through Quainton Road, the station remains connected to the railway network. Freight trains still use this line and passenger trains still call at the station for special events at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.
On 15 June 1839, entrepreneur and former Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham, Sir Harry Verney, 2nd Baronet, opened the Aylesbury Railway. Built under the direction of Robert Stephenson, it connected the London and Birmingham Railway's station, on the West Coast Main Line, to in eastern Aylesbury, the first station in the Aylesbury Vale. On 1 October 1863, the Wycombe Railway opened a branch line from Princes Risborough railway station to Aylesbury railway station on the western side of Aylesbury, making Aylesbury the terminus of two small and unconnected branch lines.
Meanwhile, to the north of Aylesbury, the Buckinghamshire Railway was being built by Sir Harry Verney. The scheme consisted of a line running roughly south-west to north-east from Oxford to Bletchley, and a line running south-east from Brackley via Buckingham, joining roughly halfway along the OxfordâÂÂBletchley line. The first section opened on 1 May 1850 and the rest opened on 20 May 1851. The Buckinghamshire Railway intended to extend the line southwards to connect to its station at Aylesbury, but this extension was not built.
Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (10 September 1823 â 26 March 1889), the only son of Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, was in serious financial difficulties by the middle of the 19th century. The second Duke had spent heavily on artworks, womanising and attempting to influence elections and, by 1847, he was nicknamed "the Greatest Debtor in the World". Over of the family's estates and their London home at Buckingham House were sold to meet debts, and the family seat of Stowe House was seized by bailiffs as security and its contents sold. The only property remaining in the control of the Grenville family was the family's relatively small ancestral home of Wotton House, and its associated lands around Wotton Underwood in Buckinghamshire. Deeply in debt, the Grenvilles began to look for ways to maximise profits from their remaining farmland around Wotton, and to seek business opportunities in the emerging fields of heavy industry and engineering. Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, who became the Marquess of Chandos on the death of his grandfather Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos in 1839, was appointed chairman of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) on 27 May 1857. On the death of his father on 29 July 1861, he became the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, and resigned from the chairmanship of the LNWR, returning to Wotton House to manage the family's remaining estates.
On 6 August 1860, the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway (A&B), with the third Duke (then still Marquess of Chandos) as chairman and Sir Harry Verney as deputy chairman, was incorporated by Act of Parliament with the object of connecting the Buckinghamshire Railway (by now operated by the LNWR) to Aylesbury. The 2nd Duke used his influence to ensure the new route would run via Quainton, near his remaining estates around Wotton, instead of the intended more direct route via Pitchcott. Beset by financial difficulties, the line took over eight years to build, eventually opening on 23 September 1868. The new line was connected to the Wycombe Railway's Aylesbury station, and joined the existing Buckinghamshire Railway lines at the point where the OxfordâÂÂBletchley line and the line to Buckingham already met. Verney Junction railway station was built at the point where the lines joined, named after Sir Harry who owned the land on which it was built, since there was no nearby town. Aylesbury now had railways to the east, north and south-west, but no line south-east towards London and the Channel ports.
Quainton Road station was built on a curve in the line at the nearest point to the Duke's estates at Wotton. north-west of Aylesbury, it was south-west of the small village of Quainton and immediately north-west of the road connecting Quainton to Akeman Street. The railway towards Aylesbury crossed the road via a level crossing immediately south-east of the station. The Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway had spent most of their limited budget on the construction of the line itself. Details of the design of the original Quainton Road station are lost, but it is likely that the station had a single timber-covered earth platform and minimal buildings; it was described in 1890 as being extremely primitive.
With a railway now running near the boundary of the Wotton House estate at Quainton Road, the 3rd Duke decided to open a small-scale agricultural railway to connect the estate to the railway. The line was intended purely for the transport of construction materials and agricultural produce, and not passengers. The line was to run roughly south-west from Quainton Road to a new railway station near Wotton Underwood. Just west of the station at Wotton the line split: one section would run west to Wood Siding near Brill; a short stub called Church Siding would run north-west into the village of Wotton Underwood itself, terminating near the parish church, and a one mile 57 chain (one mile 1,254 yards; 2.8km) siding would run north to a coal siding near Kingswood.
He extended it soon afterwards to provide a passenger service to the town of Brill, and the tramway was converted to locomotive operation, known as the Brill Tramway. All goods to and from the Brill Tramway passed through Quainton Road, making it relatively heavily used despite its geographical isolation, and traffic increased further when construction began on Ferdinand de Rothschild's mansion of Waddesdon Manor. The plan of extending the Brill Tramway to Oxford, which would have made Quainton Road a major junction station, was abandoned.
Instead, the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and the Brill Tramway were absorbed by London's Metropolitan Railway (MR), which already operated the line from Aylesbury to London. The MR rebuilt Quainton Road and re-sited it to a more convenient location, allowing through running between the Brill Tramway and the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway. When the Great Central Railway (GCR) from the north of England opened, Quainton Road became a significant junction at which trains from four directions met, and by far the busiest of the MR's rural stations.
Construction began on the line on 8 September 1870. It was built as cheaply as possible, using the cheapest available materials and winding around hills wherever feasible to avoid expensive earthworks. The station platforms were crude earth banks high, held in place by wooden planks. As the Duke intended that the line be worked by horses, it was built with longitudinal sleepers to reduce the risk of them tripping.
On 1 April 1871, the section between Quainton Road and Wotton was formally opened by the Duke in a brief ceremony. At the time of its opening, the line was unnamed, although it was referred to as "The Quainton Tramway" in internal correspondence.