Quite a bit, really. I managed to get around to quite a few places in North Bucks when we were allowed to, and got all the way to Hillesden before the lockdown. But this post is a Covid free zone; I’ll say no more about that today.

Now here are some of the highlights of the year from the North Bucks Wanderer.

On a grey February day I explored The Railway That Nearly Was, a line that might have gone all the way from Wolverton to Wellingborough, but only made it as far as Newport Pagnell. If you know what to look for, you can still see where the line was meant to run.

This was the old station at Great Linford.

Hillesden Church is often called The Cathedral in the Fields, for its huge Perpendicular windows. Because of the windows, Inside All is Bright, but here is the outside of the porch door, in the shade. That’s a musket ball hole.

In Pancakes for Everyone, some of the Olney Pancake Race competitors wait to run. As well as the town race, there’s an international match against another pancake race in Liberal, Texas.

One of the great supporting piers at Bletchley. You can see the scale of it from the two men just visible at the top.

Across the middle of North Bucks, the rebuilding of the 1850 railway is steaming ahead. Many local roads have been closed while works are carried out for the East West Rail project.

The project will create a rail link between Oxford and Cambridge, much of it on the routes of long closed lines, though there will be a brand new stretch of line on the far side of Bedford.

Often, it seems, the road are closed simply to keep a safe distance between workmen and the general public, but at Bletchley the road is closed while the 2,000 feet long railway flyover is being extensively rebuilt. The flyover was first in use in 1959.

The great piers are remaining, but a huge crane has been lifting the heavy concrete spans away one at a time. The first span was lifted in two parts, as it weighed 295 tonnes.

Taken from the railway bridge at Buckingham Road, Winslow.

The Monday Photo

Workmen clear trees from the old railway cutting at Winslow, where the old railway branch line is to be reinstalled as part of the East West Rail project. In the distance, two more workmen walk along the flooded track bed towards the old iron foot bridge.

When the project is finished, you will be able to travel by rail to places such as Worcester, Glasgow, or the Norfolk coast, without having to spend three or four hours going all the way into London, then coming back out again on a different line.

Don’t forget, you would have to struggle across the underground with your luggage too. This is not the best way to go on holiday. Instead, you will be able to take the new line East or West across to the main line you need. From the new station at Winslow, you will also be able to get to Aylesbury, then from there to London Marylebone.

Services will start to run at the end of 2024, say East West Rail. Between Oxford and Milton Keynes there will be two services every hour. From Oxford to Bedford: one service an hour, and between Milton Keynes and Aylesbury they say there will be a service every hour.

All these trains will pass through Winslow, so I expect they’ll all be stopping at the new station. Meanwhile, there will be more room on trains in and out of the North side of London.

These workmen travel from near Brighton every day; a matter of a couple of hours by road at the moment, they say. That know that will change when the lockdown is over.

This is an Amazon link.

This home signal is all that remains of the last station reached; Newport Pagnell. The goods yard and station site is now under houses.

When you travel the back roads or footpaths between Olney and Newport Pagnell, you may notice long banks or hollows in the fields, crowded with trees. They are the remains of a railway that nearly came to run from Wolverton to Olney, and was planned to go even further.

Only the first four miles of the line was ever finished, less than one fifth of the total scheme. Who knows what other changes might have happened if the line had been completed?

But it had started well. In 1866 a branch line from Wolverton to Newport Pagnell opened, part of the London and North Western railway (the LNWR).

Already plans had been made to extend the branch line to Olney, and then to Wellingborough to join another part of the LNWR there.

Contractors started work on cuttings and embankments between Newport Pagnell and Olney in 1865, almost as soon as their work on the Newport Pagnell line had finished. A bridge was built over Wolverton Road the next year. It would take the line North through what’s now the police station.

This seventy year old steam locomotive came through Milton Keynes on the West Coast Main Line last Friday, on its way to Euston after a tour of the Scottish Highlands.

Engine 61306, ‘Mayflower’, was pulling the sort of carriage that I remember from the late 60s and the early 70s.

At the rear was an old diesel locomotive, but the Mayflower was doing all the work. I think the diesel was just there as a back up; I seem to remember it’s a requirement of taking an old engine onto the railway network.

Mayflower was completed in 1948, and built to a London North Eastern Railway design. By the time it was finished the railways had been privatised, so the locomotive went to work for British Railways until it was withdrawn from service in 1967.

I had fallen into conversation with a rail enthusiast a couple of days earlier who had told me about this train, so I was ready and waiting on the bridge just after six o’clock on Friday evening.

Several trains went up and down the four sets of tracks while I waited. It’s a busy line. At just before 6:28pm the train approached. It was a warm and sunny evening, but now the cutting was in shadow.

The driver sounded the whistle; I think he had seen me. He was kind enough to be wearing a nice red shirt that showed up well against the LNER green of the locomotive, as he drove the train with his elbow on the window sill.

Thanks for the tip, Ken.

Tales From The Edge
This is an occasional series where I go to the edge of North Bucks and show you what I've found.

Tring railway cutting is deep. It’s so deep it took me two visits to find a way of photographing it.

On the first try, I could get on a footpath right next to the wire fence and could hear trains go by, but couldn’t see them no matter what I did. I was also not in Buckinghamshire, as the county boundary goes along the middle of the road and over the bridge.

On the second try I went into the College Lake nature reserve and walked along the wooden fence by the cutting, but couldn’t see a thing. It’s a nice place to visit, though.

Back to the road and the bridge over the railway, where I found I could stand on the crash barrier at one end of the bridge and hold the camera up high. It took a few goes, but I got a photo of the slow train trundling by on the furthest set of tracks. Fast trains on the nearest tracks were still invisible to me.

Folly Bridge carries the B488 Upper Icknield Way, a Roman road, across the cutting.

That’s great, but it doesn’t show you folks the depth and scale of the cutting. I jumped down and walked to the middle of the bridge; there’s a narrow footpath beside the road.

The bridge parapet is above head height. I put on a long lens, and held the camera above my head. After ten minutes and sixteen attempts, I got the shot.

Looking North into Bucks from Folly Bridge.

Folly bridge carries the B488 over the cutting at about it’s maximum depth of 12m, 40 feet. Work began in mid 1835, and the two and a half mile cutting was finished in late 1837. Except for where rock blasting was needed, it was all dug by hand. That’s an enormous amount of earth. The cutting took two tracks and the sides were at a 45° angle.

The cutting was widened in 1859 to take three lines, and again in 1876 to take four. It was widened again in the 1960s during electrification of the line and the sides of the cutting are now at a much steeper angle. No wonder I couldn’t see into it.

More than any I’ve done so far, this is truly a tale from the edge.

Thanks to Roger Runswick for telling me about this place on the edge.