| For nearly 100 years, the beautiful Test Valley had a railway linking Andover with Southampton via Stockbridge and Romsey. Promoted as an independent company by local people, the Andover & Redbridge Railway was nevertheless operated from its opening in 1865 by the London & South Western Railway after a struggle with the Great Western Railway, which had wanted to gain control of the line. In its early years, the A&R, serving a sparse intermediate population, showed little sign of making money for the LSWR, and its train services were slow and infrequent. It even achieved some local notoriety for uncomfortable travel because the track had been laid on the bed of the Andover Canal, closed in 1859 just before construction of the line began. Using the canal alignment resulted in some very sharp curves, described by one LSWR Director as 'more like angles'. During the 1880s, the line was upgraded and realigned to provide a through route from the Midland & South Western Junction Railway, which was to link Andover with Cheltenham. Expresses running in connection with transatlantic liners at Southampton and Liverpool became a familiar sight from the end of the 19th Century until the First World War. In both World Wars, the route became of immense strategic importance for the movement of troops, supplies and ambulance trains. Even the thinly trafficked Longparish branch, which joined the A&R at Fullerton, gained a new lease of life in World War II serving ammunition depots in Harewood Forest. In the post-war political climate, railways were disadvantaged in favor of road transport and, although the A&R gained a regular interval diesel service in 1957, it ceased to be a north-south artery when the MSWJ route north of Andover was first run down, and then closed in 1961. British Railways and the Ministry of Transport ignored the imminent expansion of Andover, which ought to have secured the direct rail link to Southampton The A&R closed north of Romsey on 7 September 1964, six months short of its centenary, but remains very much in use between Romsey and Redbridge as part of the South Wales-Portsmouth route. Contents:
- Introduction And Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 From Canal to Railway
- Chapter 2 A Line on a Shoestring
- Chapter 3 Wider Horizons
- Chapter 4 The Southern Railway Era
- Chapter 5 Late Southern Railway to Early BR
- Chapter 6 The Dawn of the Diesels
- Chapter 7 A Hostile Climate
- Chapter 8 Killed by Whitehall
- Chapter 9 The Line Described
- Appendix A Signaling Diagrams
- Appendix B Track and Building Plans
- Appendix C Andover Line Traffic
- Bibliography
Continent: Europe
Country: UK
Area: UK Hampshire |
