Kemble Railway Station
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Location: Outskirts of Kemble, Gloucestershie, England
Serving: Trains to Gloucester and beyond (in one direction) and Swindon (then hence to London or Bristol in the other.
Why an entry? Well its a lovely little station where you can stand on the up platform on a sunny spring morning listening to the chattering of House Sparrows feeding their young in nests in the eaves of the platform roof, while looking across to the tall stand of conifers picking up every breath of wind like a sound box of a guitar.
Like so many old branch line stations across Britain it is overlaid with ghosts of the past. An overgrown platform at the back of the station reminds anyone over 40 who travelled from it as a child that once a busy branch line ran into the town of Cirencester 5 miles away, shifting cattle to and from the towns market and coal to the old Austins coal yard that ran one side of the Town sidings. Even more hidden, with few relics, is a trackbed on the other side of the station where yet another branch line connected the town of Tetbury 5 miles in the opposite direction. Both lines now gone and unlikely ever to be restored with the slow demolition of bridges and gradual building of housing estates over the two tracks courses.
Nowadays it sees hoards of London bound commuters descend on the car park build on the old yards. Picking up an Inter-city 125 of a morning to whisk them into Paddington, how many realise that they are part of a history of high spped commuting stretching back into the 1930's when the Cheltenham flyer, calling at the station, held the World speed record for the fastest Steam train. What an irony that the 1932 time for the Swindon-Paddington leg of the Flyer was 67 minutes - 70 years latter it's down to 55!
For me the memories are more poignant, particularly not being a railway buff. They're of late winter nights waiting to get trains to Birmingham as a student in the 1970's, sitting with the station guard in his office around a large pot-bellied stove - the only passenger on the station hearing tales of its former glories. Or standing in the sun in its them beautifully maintained little garden listening to the hum of bees flying between the flower beds.
For more about the Cheltenham Flyer visit http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r037.html
For photographs of the station visit http://www.kemble1.co.uk/resources/railway.html
Serving: Trains to Gloucester and beyond (in one direction) and Swindon (then hence to London or Bristol in the other.
Why an entry? Well its a lovely little station where you can stand on the up platform on a sunny spring morning listening to the chattering of House Sparrows feeding their young in nests in the eaves of the platform roof, while looking across to the tall stand of conifers picking up every breath of wind like a sound box of a guitar.
Like so many old branch line stations across Britain it is overlaid with ghosts of the past. An overgrown platform at the back of the station reminds anyone over 40 who travelled from it as a child that once a busy branch line ran into the town of Cirencester 5 miles away, shifting cattle to and from the towns market and coal to the old Austins coal yard that ran one side of the Town sidings. Even more hidden, with few relics, is a trackbed on the other side of the station where yet another branch line connected the town of Tetbury 5 miles in the opposite direction. Both lines now gone and unlikely ever to be restored with the slow demolition of bridges and gradual building of housing estates over the two tracks courses.
Nowadays it sees hoards of London bound commuters descend on the car park build on the old yards. Picking up an Inter-city 125 of a morning to whisk them into Paddington, how many realise that they are part of a history of high spped commuting stretching back into the 1930's when the Cheltenham flyer, calling at the station, held the World speed record for the fastest Steam train. What an irony that the 1932 time for the Swindon-Paddington leg of the Flyer was 67 minutes - 70 years latter it's down to 55!
For me the memories are more poignant, particularly not being a railway buff. They're of late winter nights waiting to get trains to Birmingham as a student in the 1970's, sitting with the station guard in his office around a large pot-bellied stove - the only passenger on the station hearing tales of its former glories. Or standing in the sun in its them beautifully maintained little garden listening to the hum of bees flying between the flower beds.
For more about the Cheltenham Flyer visit http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r037.html
For photographs of the station visit http://www.kemble1.co.uk/resources/railway.html
