The Aylesbury–Princes Risborough line is a rural
branch line
A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line.
Industrial spur
An industr ...
between
Princes Risborough
Princes Risborough () is a market town in Buckinghamshire, England, about south of Aylesbury and north west of High Wycombe. It lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, at the north end of a gap or pass through the Chilterns, the south end o ...
and
Aylesbury
Aylesbury ( ) is the county town of Buckinghamshire, South East England. It is home to the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery, David Tugwell`s house on Watermead and the Waterside Theatre. It is in central Buckinghamshire, midway between High Wy ...
in
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-e ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
. The line is single track throughout with a maximum speed of 40 mph.
Route plan 16: Chilterns
(2009) ''Network Rail''.
History
The line was built as a single track broad gauge
A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways.
Broad gauge of , commonly known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union ( C ...
branch of the Wycombe Railway in 1863. The branch became part of the 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 ...
when the latter took over the Wycombe Railway in 1867. The GWR converted the line to standard gauge
A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in E ...
in 1870. The branch was incorporated into the newly formed Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
The Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway was a railway built and operated jointly by the Great Western Railway (GWR) and Great Central Railway (GCR) between Northolt (in north west London) and Ashendon Junction (west of Aylesbury). It was ...
in 1906. 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 net ...
made the branch part of its Chiltern subdivision in the 1980s.
Traffic
Passenger services are now operated 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 Rail ...
. The line is regularly used by freight services operated by DB Cargo UK
DB Cargo UK (formerly DB Schenker Rail UK and English, Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS)), is a British rail freight company headquartered in Doncaster, England.
The company was established in early 1995 as ''North & South Railways'', successful ...
and Freightliner. The trains, referred to as "binliners", carry waste from London to a waste facility near the site of the former Great Central Railway
The Great Central Railway in England was formed when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897, anticipating the opening in 1899 of its London Extension. On 1 January 1923, the company was grouped into the ...
station at Calvert. For this purpose, during Chiltern Railways' Evergreen 2 project the line was resignalled with two new signals at Little Kimble, one for each direction of travel. These allow two trains to travel in the same direction, thus allowing a passenger service to follow the freight train or ''vice versa''.
Services
The current timetable, produced for December 2019, offers one passenger service per hour in each direction, with services outside the weekday morning and evening peaks operating directly between Aylesbury 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 ...
.
References
External links
Route plan 16: Chilterns
(2007) ''Network Rail''.
Route plan 16: Chilterns
(2008) ''Network Rail''.
Route plan 16: Chilterns
(2009) ''Network Rail''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aylesbury-Princes Risborough line
Rail transport in Buckinghamshire
Railway lines opened in 1863
Railway lines in South East England