Didcot to Newbury (2)

 Three Stops Then Newbury

First call is Hampstead Norris ...

... with a more recent name change!

A little stub off Water Street is named Station Hill ...

... but no station remains, just new properties on the site of the track and former station building.

Continuing southbound, the line arrives at Pinewood Halt.

This was a speculative build in a fairly desperate attempt to increase passenger numbers. The halt opened in 1933!

Its two "pagoda" shelters remained for a while after closure.

But you will not see much from the road bridge today.

The plan to encourage travel to Newbury did not work!

Next is Hermitage, also on the map above. There are several views on-line, old ...

... and a very rare picture showing the arrival (briefly before closure) of they new fangled diesel trains.

You might expect the station to sink into obscurity, but, lookee here:-

It has been superbly restored and gained a repro signal box (!) but it is all now in private hands with no access for curious rail enthusiast visitors. But there it is,[ at the end of Station Road (Surprise!) bottom right in the aerial view below.

Between Hermitage and Newbury, there is plenty of cartographical evidence of the line of route ...

... but finding any evidence of the track bed through Newbury itself is a real struggle. There is a stretch of undergrowth that branches off north from a former junction to the west of the station ...

... but that is the former GWR branch to Lambourn. 

However hard he looks, fbb cannot extract any meaningful sight of the two DNS junctions at Newbury. A fair chunk of the southern exit from the town became part of the Newbury by-pass.

Incidentally an old route map shows other unfulfilled dreams of the company. One was a joint station with the LSWR at Whitchurch and a line that would join the Southampton main line at Micheldever.

Neither plan ever materialised.

So fbb ends thus excursion with a picture of a DNS train at Newbury.

And whilst in nostalgic mode how about this (below)?

It is the famous City of Truro GWR 4-4-0 which was purported to be he first steam loco to achieve 100mph. It wasn't.

It didn't.

But this (wrongly?) celebrated loco is beautifully preserved.

But, in its active past,  it did find its way to Winchester Chesil station, then the end of the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton metals. It's route into Southampton was c/o the LSWR, but it did have unfulfilled plans of its own.

But that's another story.

P.S. Found A Trace

On Kiln Road, just north of the River Lambourne is a drive southbound to a works of some kind.

The car park to the east of the drive ...

... lies on the DNS track bed. Looking north, the former bridge parapet still stands.

There is also a line of undergrowth south of the river ...

... so the D N S was there, once!

 Next tram timetable tale blog : Thursday 7th Nov