Bishops Waltham branch

Description

The Bishops Waltham branch was a railway line in Hampshire. It ran from Botley on the Eastleigh-Fareham line to Bishops Waltham. The line was opened by the LSWR on 1 June 1863, closed to passengers on 31 December 1932 and finally closed to freight in 1962.

The line followed the course of the river Hamble for most of its route, and was simply built with single track and a few under-bridges. There was a small station halfway to Bishop's Waltham called Durley Halt that opened in 1910, but traffic was always light.

The line was built primarily to serve the large brickworks in Bishops Waltham, but the builder's hopes of high profits were never met. The original company went bankrupt and sold out to the local larger company; the London & South Western Railway (LSWR).

In the 1860s the LSWR proposed a railway line between Alton and Petersfield, This railway would have had a junction near Warnford that crossed the Meon Valley and then ran to Bishop's Waltham, thus connecting to Botley and the Eastleigh to Fareham Line. This would have required major works of civil engineering including a large bridge or viaduct, and would have put Bishop's Waltham on a major railway in the region. The plans never progressed, but were briefly re-visited after the construction of the Meon Valley Railway in 1903, which had a station at Droxford.

During the 1880s, when the LSWR was looking for a site for its main locomotive and carriage works, a group of Bishop's Waltham businessmen offered a proposal to site the works at Bishop's Waltham. The LSWR did conduct a detailed study of the proposal, but the site of Eastleigh was chosen instead, being on the main line. Eastleigh grew from a village smaller than Bishop's Waltham to a large industrial town centred around the works.

Whilst the line was usually only lightly used, with modest passenger numbers and low levels of freight, the line usually saw a period of frenetic, heavy use in the summer months during the strawberry harvest. Southern Hampshire (including the area around Bishop's Waltham, Botley, Fareham and Titchfield) was the UK's main strawberry growing region and during the harvest there was a near-continuous stream of special trains from the region to the London markets. Botley station had numerous sidings to accommodate the special trains the LSWR put on for the harvest, and the Bishop's Waltham line was key to shipping produce from the Meon Valley and the surrounding region to the main line.

The Bishop's Waltham branch was one of the few lines in the region to be worked by railmotors. These were popular for light rural lines around the turn of the century, and consisted of a small 0-4-0 type locomotive rigid-coupled to a single carriage. This provided a low-cost and simple vehicle. However, railmotors lacked the power to pull any other carriages, and so were unable to cope with sudden high passenger numbers, such as occurred on market days or public holidays, and so were replaced by light standard tank engines.

Some track still exists as a long siding, at the southernmost (Botley) end of the line. This is used by Foster Yeoman who operate an aggregate railhead depot and coated roadstone plant at Botley station.

Preservation

The Hamble Valley Railway Society is a small group that plans to construct a narrow gauge railway along the full extent of the original route from Bishops Waltham to Botley.

Images of the line today

Wangfield Lane Bridge

Durley Halt

Blind Lane Crossing

Calcot Lane Bridge

External links

* [http://www.hamblevalleyrailway.co.uk Hamble Valley Railway Society - Intends to construct a narrow gauge railway along the route.]