S&D Railway Trust

If you look carefully on google earth you can probably see the preparations on the A31 traffic island for the new Chawton halt. This will not only permit visitors to Jane Austen's house to alight within a short walk of the place, but gives somewhere for the train to stop between the two level crossings. It is believed that only activating one at a time will bring a traffic flow advantage particularly in the morning rush.


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When visting Chawton house, there is info that one of Jane Austen's relatives was an investor in the Mid Hants railway, so makes sense.

 

Kilsmerdon driving by Lord Lucan?

 

With Sergar in the horse box?

 

Do you not know that it is the manifest destiny of all heritage railways to Have An Extension, regardless of the point, cost or practicality?

I think you are due for re-education; please bring your own crayons.

 

with Elvis on the shovel.

 

Technically the MHR had two extensions already and very nearly a third, allegedly; but not in any of the directions mentioned so far!

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Whoops! Duly Edited.

 

Towards Basingstoke?

 

No.

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Nah, it will have been to join with the LMR.

 

It only goes 2 ways so that sounds a bit silly unless they went sideways

 

Yeah honestly, stop being so silly @21B

 

Does Mr Chapman have to tell us to again?

 

Tongham?

Alton: the Crewe of the South.

 

So the story goes BR wanted shot of the section Farnham to Alton (an operational pain is that the carriage sidings are at Farnham) and in the 1980s Alton wasnt the commuter line it has become. Whether they were joking or not I dont know, but a senior BR person present at the Alton reopening is said to have enquired when the MHR would like to take over the lease on the railway to Farnham.

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Wouldn't it be nice!

Tom

 

Always Be Extending.

Are they crayons for drawing or for half time snacks?

 

My grandparents lived in Bentley and Isington (the latter in sight of the line, paradise for a small kid!) and as a child, I remember seeing the line being downgraded during the 1980s, including the singling in the mid-1980s. In amongst various discussions on the woes of development and change in the area at the time, I never remember any mention of the railway being under threat which, given my grandfather's 15 years of commuting* to London from Bentley before retirement after they moved there, is something that I am sure would have come up in discussion.

* Going even further off topic, my favourite story of my grandfather (a very sober suited lawyer/civil servant) is of him picking up two bottles of gin on the way to Waterloo, and then tripping on the concourse as he rushed for the train. He was apparently looked at rather oddly when boarding, and allowed a compartment to himself...