Railways through the Vale of the White Horse

A commemorative history of the railways of the beautiful Oxfordshire district 'Vale of the White Horse', running twenty-seven miles from Steventon to Wootton Bassett. The book spans the history of the route from the opening in 1840 until 1965, when British Rail withdrew all the local passenger services between Didcot and Swindon and all the intermediate stations were closed. With personal insight and images from railway historian Adrian Vaughan, the book covers the Great Western Railway's development of the route, as part of Brunel's 'Bristol Railway' and shows the original correspondence between Brunel and his staff. Fully illustrated with hundreds of historical photographs and detailed track diagrams, 'Railways through the Vale of the White Horse' is an ideal resource for anyone with an interest in this scenic railway route and a nostalgia for the early days of railways in Britain. AUTHOR: Adrian Vaughan was born in Reading in 1941, and grew up in touch with the GWR and its nationalized successor. He learned signalling routine in 1950 and became a volunteer porter at Challow station in 1953, where he learned to drive the shunting engine and the intracacies of the signalling regulations. After four and a half years in the Army he became a paid porter at Challow and went on to be a signalman at Uffington in 1961. He married Susan in 1972 and departed the modernising railways in 1975. 200 b/w photographs 37 diagrams of the track layouts