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Wantage Tramway
The Wantage Tramway Company was a two-mile tramway that carried passengers and freight between the Oxfordshire town of Wantage and Wantage Road Station on the Great Western Main Line in England. Formed in 1873 to link Wantage Road station with its terminus at Mill Street, Wantage the line was cheaply built parallel to what was then the ''Besselsleigh Turnpike'', and now the A338. The tramway closed to passengers in 1925 and to goods traffic in 1945. Opening The line was opened for goods on 1 October 1875, and to passengers on 11 October. The tramway junction was to the east of Wantage Road station; interchange passengers walked under the bridge to reach the tramway yard, where the westernmost siding (parallel to the road) was reserved for passenger tramcars. Rolling stock Built as a standard gauge line, and first run using horse drawn rolling stock, the line became the first to adopt mechanical traction when a steam-powered tramcar, designed by John Grantham, was tried out ...
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Wantage
Wantage () is a historic market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, England. Although within the boundaries of the historic county of Berkshire, it has been administered as part of the Vale of White Horse district of Oxfordshire since 1974. The town is on Letcombe Brook, south-west of Abingdon, north-west of Reading, south-west of Oxford and north-west of Newbury. It was the birthplace of King Alfred the Great in 849. History Wantage was a small Roman settlement but the origin of the toponym is somewhat uncertain. It is generally thought to be from an Old English phrase meaning "decreasing river". King Alfred the Great was born at the royal palace there in the 9th century, in what was originally known as Wanating. Wantage appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its value was £61 and it was in the king's ownership until Richard I passed it to the Earl of Albemarle in 1190. Weekly trading rights were first granted to the town by Henry III in 1246. Markets are now held ...
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Mekarski System
The Mekarski system was a compressed-air propulsion system for trams invented by Louis Mékarski or Louis Mékarsky (the correct spelling is uncertain) in the 1870s. He worked in France, was born in 1843 in Clermont-Ferrand (center of France) of Polish origin. Many references to him use the Polish name ''Ludwik Mękarski''. Overview A problem with compressed-air propulsion is that the air cools as it expands, which can lead to the formation of ice in the power cylinders. Mekarski sought to overcome this problem by heating the air with steam, produced in a small boiler called a ''bouillotte''. It is uncertain whether the steam was mixed with the air, or whether there was a heat exchanger. It was a single-stage engine in that air was expanded in one piston and then exhausted. The air was reheated after leaving the tank and before entering the engine. The reheater bubbled air through a hot water tank, picking up hot water vapor to improve the engine's range. An improved engine ...
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Closed Railway Lines In South East England
Closed may refer to: Mathematics * Closure (mathematics), a set, along with operations, for which applying those operations on members always results in a member of the set * Closed set, a set which contains all its limit points * Closed interval, an interval which includes its endpoints * Closed line segment, a line segment which includes its endpoints * Closed manifold, a compact manifold which has no boundary Other uses * Closed (poker), a betting round where no player will have the right to raise * ''Closed'' (album), a 2010 album by Bomb Factory * Closed GmbH, a German fashion brand * Closed class, in linguistics, a class of words or other entities which rarely changes See also * * Close (other) * Closed loop (other) * Closing (other) * Closure (other) * Open (other) Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ' ...
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Tram Transport In England
A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are called tramways or simply trams/streetcars. Many recently built tramways use the contemporary term light rail. The vehicles are called streetcars or trolleys (not to be confused with trolleybus) in North America and trams or tramcars elsewhere. The first two terms are often used interchangeably in the United States, with ''trolley'' being the preferred term in the eastern US and ''streetcar'' in the western US. ''Streetcar'' or ''tramway'' are preferred in Canada. In parts of the United States, internally powered buses made to resemble a streetcar are often referred to as "trolleys". To avoid further confusion with trolley buses, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) refers to them as "trolley-replica buses". In the United ...
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Rail Transport In Oxfordshire
Rail or rails may refer to: Rail transport *Rail transport and related matters *Rail (rail transport) or railway lines, the running surface of a railway Arts and media Film * ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini * ''Rail'' (1967 film), a film by Geoffrey Jones for British Transport Films *'' Mirattu'' or ''Rail'', a Tamil-language film and its Telugu dub Magazines * ''Rail'' (magazine), a British rail transport periodical * ''Rails'' (magazine), a former New Zealand based rail transport periodical Other arts *The Rails, a British folk-rock band * Rail (theater) or batten, a pipe from which lighting, scenery, or curtains are hung Technology *Rails framework or Ruby on Rails, a web application framework *Rail system (firearms), a mounting system for firearm attachments *Front engine dragster *Runway alignment indicator lights, a configuration of an approach lighting system *Rule Augmented Interconnect Layout, a specification for expressing guidelines for prin ...
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Wantage Tramway
The Wantage Tramway Company was a two-mile tramway that carried passengers and freight between the Oxfordshire town of Wantage and Wantage Road Station on the Great Western Main Line in England. Formed in 1873 to link Wantage Road station with its terminus at Mill Street, Wantage the line was cheaply built parallel to what was then the ''Besselsleigh Turnpike'', and now the A338. The tramway closed to passengers in 1925 and to goods traffic in 1945. Opening The line was opened for goods on 1 October 1875, and to passengers on 11 October. The tramway junction was to the east of Wantage Road station; interchange passengers walked under the bridge to reach the tramway yard, where the westernmost siding (parallel to the road) was reserved for passenger tramcars. Rolling stock Built as a standard gauge line, and first run using horse drawn rolling stock, the line became the first to adopt mechanical traction when a steam-powered tramcar, designed by John Grantham, was tried out ...
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Didcot
Didcot ( ) is a railway town and civil parish in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire and the historic county of Berkshire. Didcot is south of Oxford, east of Wantage and north west of Reading. The town is noted for its railway heritage, Didcot station opening as a junction station on the Great Western Main Line in 1844. Today the town is known for the railway museum and power stations, and is the gateway town to the Science Vale: three large science and technology centres in the surrounding villages of Milton (Milton Park), Culham (Culham Science Centre) and Harwell (Harwell Science and Innovation Campus which includes the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory). History Ancient and Medieval eras The area around present-day Didcot has been inhabited for at least 9,000 years. A large archaeological dig between 2010 and 2013 produced finds from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Iron Age and Bronze Age. In the Roman era the inhabitants of the area tried to drain the marshland by digging di ...
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Didcot Railway Centre
Didcot Railway Centre is a railway museum and preservation engineering site in Didcot, Oxfordshire, England. The site was formerly a Great Western Railway engine shed and locomotive stabling point. Background The founders and commercial backers of the Great Western Railway (GWR) supported Isambard Kingdom Brunel's scheme to develop an integrated railway and steamship service which allowed trans-Atlantic passengers and freight quicker passage between London and New York City. However, whilst backing the scheme the railway had to make a profit, and so it took a number of detours and added both mainline and branch line traffic to increase its domestic earnings. This earned the railway the nickname ''The Great Way Round'' from its detractors. Whilst the route from London Paddington to Reading was relatively straight, the then obvious most direct route to Bristol would have taken the railway further south, thus avoiding both Didcot and Swindon. However, passenger and freight traffic ...
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Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council was abolished in 2009. Bedfordshire is bordered by Cambridgeshire to the east and north-east, Northamptonshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the south-east and south. It is the fourteenth most densely populated county of England, with over half the population of the county living in the two largest built-up areas: Luton (258,018) and Bedford (106,940). The highest elevation point is on Dunstable Downs in the Chilterns. History The first recorded use of the name in 1011 was "Bedanfordscir," meaning the shire or county of Bedford, which itself means "Beda's ford" (river crossing). Bedfordshire was historically divided into nine hundreds: Barford, Biggleswade, Clifton, Flitt, Manshead, Redbornestoke, S ...
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Shannon (locomotive)
''Shannon'' is a steam locomotive, built in 1857 George England and Co. for the Sandy and Potton Railway and now preserved at the Didcot Railway Centre. History The locomotive was built in 1857 by George England and Co. of New Cross for the Sandy and Potton Railway, at a cost of £800. The railway was promoted by Captain Sir William Peel VC, whose estate lay between those towns, and the locomotive was named after his ship, the frigate HMS Shannon. In 1862 it was sold to the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) for shunting at Crewe Works and numbered 1104. The LNWR also briefly tried it out on the Cromford and High Peak Railway. It was renumbered 1863 in 1872. In 1878 it was sold to the Wantage Tramway for £365 8s 1d where it became No 5, and was known as 'Jane' although the name was never actually carried. It was initially fitted with full tramway skirts, but these were removed after a few years. After closure of the tramway in 1945 it was purchased for £100 by the Gr ...
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Shannon @ Didcot
Shannon may refer to: People * Shannon (given name) * Shannon (surname) * Shannon (American singer), stage name of singer Shannon Brenda Greene (born 1958) * Shannon (South Korean singer), British-South Korean singer and actress Shannon Arrum Williams (born 1998) * Shannon, intermittent stage name of English singer-songwriter Marty Wilde (born 1939) * Claude Shannon (1916-2001) was American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory" Places Australia * Shannon, Tasmania, a locality * Hundred of Shannon, a cadastral unit in South Australia * Shannon, a former name for the area named Calomba, South Australia since 1916 * Shannon River (Western Australia) Canada * Shannon, New Brunswick, a community * Shannon, Quebec, a city * Shannon Bay, former name of Darrell Bay, British Columbia * Shannon Falls, a waterfall in British Columbia Ireland * River Shannon, the longest river in Ireland ** Shannon Cave, a subterranean section of t ...
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Royal Arsenal Railway
The Royal Arsenal Railway was a private military railway which operated inside the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, southeast London. Introduction The earliest parts of this railway system proper were constructed to standard gauge from 1859 onwards to replace an ad hoc arrangement of individual plateways. Laying of plateways had started in 1824 and was completed by 1854–1855; they then came under the control of the Corps of Royal Engineers. From 1871 onwards some of the track was constructed as gauge and it comprised some of track. It ran in some form from 1871 until much of it was abandoned after the First World War. The remains of the system continued in use until after the Second World War, with the final trains running in 1966. Parts of the gauge track were built as dual gauge track, with the outer rails gauged to standard gauge; other parts of the site were only served by standard gauge track. Some of mixed or purely standard gauge track existed by 1918. Some narrow gauge tr ...
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