Oxford Parkway railway station is a

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

Water Eaton, Oxfordshire Water Eaton is a hamlet in the civil parish of Gosford and Water Eaton, between Oxford and Kidlington in Oxfordshire. Water Eaton was a separate civil parish until 1932, when it was merged with its neighbour Gosford. Manor ''Eaton'' is a comm ...

, on the

Oxford–Bicester line The Oxford–Bicester line is a railway line linking Oxford and Bicester in Oxfordshire, England. Opened in 1850, later becoming part of a through route to Cambridge, it closed in 1967 along with much of the rest of the original line. The sect ...

. Full regular weekday service began on Monday 26 October 2015, although the first passengers travelled the previous day on a Sunday timetable. The station, whose name was changed in September 2013 from the provisional "Water Eaton Parkway", lies between

Kidlington Kidlington is a major village and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Oxfordshire, England, between the River Cherwell and the Oxford Canal, north of Oxford and 7 miles (12 km) south-west of Bicester. It remains officially a village ...

and

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

beside the existing Water Eaton

park-and-ride A park and ride, also known as incentive parking or a commuter lot, is a parking lot with public transport connections that allows commuters and other people heading to city centres to leave their vehicles and transfer to a bus, rail system (rapi ...

site. It serves Kidlington, north Oxford and nearby villages. The station forms part of a multi-modal transport interchange node, connecting travellers by bus, cycle, on foot and by car with rail transport. It is also intended to attract park-and-ride traffic from the busy A34, A40 and

A44 road The A44 is a major road in the United Kingdom that runs from Oxford in southern England to Aberystwyth in west Wales. History The original (1923) route of the A44 was Chipping Norton to Aberystwyth. No changes were made to the route of the ...

s. Services to Oxford started on 11 December 2016.

Description

The station is part of Project Evergreen 3, funded and managed by

Chiltern Railways Chiltern Railways, formally The Chiltern Railway Company Limited, is a British train operating company that has operated the Chiltern Railways franchise since July 1996. Since 2009, it has been a subsidiary of Arriva UK Trains. Chiltern Railw ...

. It is served every half-hour by trains from London . Chiltern Railways opened the station in October 2015 for trains towards Bicester and

London Marylebone Marylebone station ( ) is a Central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the Marylebone area of the City of Westminster. On the National Rail network it is also known as London Marylebone and is the southern te ...

, with services to

Oxford railway station Oxford railway station is a mainline railway station, one of two serving the city of Oxford, England. It is about west of the city centre, north-west of Frideswide Square and the eastern end of Botley Road. It is on the line for trains between ...

beginning in December 2016, delayed from Spring 2016 as locals objected to the extra noise that would be caused. The journey time to London is about an hour. Network Rail completed the final track upgrades on this portion of the route in September 2016 allowing driver training runs on the line ahead of the inauguration of new services on 11 December. The

East West Rail Consortium East West Rail is a major project to establish a strategic railway connecting East Anglia with Central, Southern and Western England. In particular, it plans to build (or rebuild) a line linking Oxford and Cambridge via Bicester, Milton Keyn ...

's planned rail service between Oxford and and Midland will also serve Oxford Parkway. The station is on the site of the

Buckinghamshire Railway The Buckinghamshire Railway was a railway company in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, England that constructed railway lines connecting Bletchley, Banbury and Oxford. Part of the route is still in use today as the Oxford to Bicester Line. His ...

's temporary Oxford Banbury Road terminus (1850–51), and north-east of the site of the former (1905–26). In 1942 a Government grain

silo A silo (from the Greek σιρός – ''siros'', "pit for holding grain") is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store fermented feed known as silage, not to be confused with a grain bin, which is used t ...

was built next to the site as part of a Second World War network to concentrate scarce food and distribute it by rail. It was in use until the late 1980s. In October 2013 Chiltern Railways had it demolished as part of site preparation for the new station and car park. Oxford_Parkway_3rd_November2015_12

Water Eaton Park-and-Ride is immediately adjacent, with bus services to central Oxford and to the Headington hospitals (Monday to Friday only). The station lies on

National Cycle Route 51 National Cycle Route 51 is an English long distance cycle route running broadly east-west connecting Colchester and the port of Harwich to Oxford via Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Bedford, Milton Keynes, Bicester, and Kidlington. Links to ...

, which links Oxford to Bicester and further East. Oxford Parkway has covered two-level parking for 152 pedal cycles adjacent to the entrance, additional to the existing cycle parking at the nearby Park & Ride. It has CCTV surveillance. The car park has 815 standard spaces, plus 41 spaces for passengers with reduced mobility. There is realtime information about remaining available spaces. There is a fee to park a car but the first hour is free. There are also spaces for 30 motorcycles. Purchase of rail travel tickets is by machine; there is no ticket office at the station, but there is an information desk. Toilet and refreshment facilities are also present.

Grain silo

Prior to the station's construction, the site was occupied by a large grain silo. This followed a standard pattern common to other wartime silos, taking the form of two banks of ten seven-storey high cylindrical reinforced concrete silos side by side with the space between them filled by a brick access shaft. In the shaft there were associated grain handling machinery and two enormous grain driers which extended the full height of the building. It was built in the early 1940s and closed in the late 1980s, after which the yard surrounding it was used by several local businesses including a pet food supplier and a car breaker.

Construction

Building of the station began in late October 2014 and was sufficiently advanced for services to begin 12 months later.

Services

All services at Oxford Parkway are operated by

. The current off-peak service in trains per hour is: * 2 tph to

* 2 tph to

References

External links

{{commons category
Chiltern Railways official home pageEvergreen 3 Project
Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 2015 Railway stations in Oxfordshire Railway stations opened by Network Rail Railway stations served by Chiltern Railways East West Rail