Ascott-under-Wychwood 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 ...

serving the village of

Ascott-under-Wychwood Ascott-under-Wychwood is a village and civil parish in the Evenlode valley about south of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 560. Toponym The village is one of three named after the hist ...

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

, England. It is on the

Cotswold Line The Cotswold Line is an railway line between and in England. History Early years The line between Oxford and Worcester was built under an 1845 Act of Parliament and opened in 1851 as part of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. ...

. The station, and all trains serving it, are operated by

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

. West of the station is a level crossing, controlled by Ascott-under-Wychwood Signal Box, which also oversees the adjacent end of the double-tracked section of the Cotswold Line. Under proposals to extend the doubling of the route, the signal box was to be removed but budgetary constraints on resignalling led to that proposal being revised.

History

Opened by the

Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway (OW&WR) was a railway company in England. It built a line from Wolvercot JunctionThe nearby settlement is spelt ''Wolvercote'' and a later station on the LNWR Bicester line follows that spelling. ...

, it became part of the

West Midland Railway The West Midland Railway was an early British railway company. It was formed on 1 July 1860 by a merger of several older railway companies and amalgamated with the Great Western Railway on 1 August 1863. It was the successor to the Oxford, Worces ...

and then was absorbed by the

. The station then passed on to the

Western Region of British Railways The Western Region was a region of British Railways from 1948. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right on completion of the "Organising for Quality" initiative on 6 April 1992. The Region consisted principally of ex- Great ...

nationalisation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...

in 1948. The ''

Reshaping of British Railways The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain. The plan was outlined in two reports: ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' (1963) and ''The Development of the ...

'' report proposed the closure of Ascott-under-Wychwood station, but the recommendation was not implemented. When British Rail introduced Sectorisation in the 1980s, the station was served by

Network SouthEast Network SouthEast (NSE) was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982. NSE mainly operated commuter rail trains within Greater London and inter-urban services in densely populated South East England, although the netwo ...

until the

Privatisation of British Rail The privatisation of British Rail was the process by which ownership and operation of the railways of Great Britain passed from government control into private hands. Begun in 1994, it had been completed by 1997. The deregulation of the industr ...

. It was then managed by

Thames Trains Thames Trains was a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by Go-Ahead Group, Go-Ahead that operated the Thames Trains franchise from October 1996 until March 2004. History The Thames Trains franchise was awarded by the Director o ...

, but after a short period with

First Great Western Link First Great Western Link (FGWL) was a train operating company in England owned by FirstGroup that operated the Thames franchise from April 2004 until March 2006. History In April 2003 the Strategic Rail Authority invited FirstGroup and Go-Ahe ...

, it is now managed by Great Western Railway.

Services

Currently there is only one peak-hour train per day in each direction Mondays–Fridays including most bank holidays, and no regular Saturday or Sunday service. A limited Saturday service operates in the weeks running up to Christmas.

References

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External links

Station on navigable O.S. map
Railway stations in Oxfordshire DfT Category F2 stations Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1853 Railway stations served by Great Western Railway {{SouthEastEngland-railstation-stub