Challow railway station

Challow railway station is a former railway station south of the village of Stanford in the Vale on the A417 road between Wantage and Faringdon. It is named after the villages of West Challow and East Challow, which are and southeast respectively of the former station. When the Great Western Railway extended its main line from Reading through the Vale of White Horse in 1840 it opened the station as Faringdon Road station. After the Faringdon Railway between Uffington and Faringdon railway station opened in 1864, the GWR renamed Faringdon Road "Challow" to avoid confusion. On 7 December 1964 British Railways withdrew passenger services from Challow and all other intermediate stations between Didcot and Swindon.

The station today

Not many parts of the station survive. The northern platform has almost disappeared completely and the southern platform is used by Network Rail, although no buildings remain and the buildings used by Network Rail are only small portable cabins. New buildings have been built around the site. The most noticeable is the bail depot on the site of the northern platform. The nearby public house, the Prince of Wales, was burnt down in 1999 and the site has been levelled. Freight trains now use a passing loop on the site of the station to wait for High Speed Trains to overtake them.

Bibliography

In this omnibus edition of his memoirs, Vaughan describes his time in the early 1960's as a Lad Porter at Challow station. Appendices show track layout and signalling.