Quainton Road Railway Station - Closure

Closure

The last scheduled passenger service on the Brill Tramway left Quainton Road in the afternoon of 30 November 1935. Hundreds of people gathered, and a number of members of the Oxford University Railway Society travelled from Oxford in an effort to buy the last ticket. Accompanied by firecrackers and fog signals, the train ran the length of the line to Brill, where the passengers posed for a photograph. Late that evening, a two-coach staff train pulled out of Brill, accompanied by a band bearing a white flag and playing Auld Lang Syne. The train stopped at each station along the route, picking up the staff, documents and valuables from each. At 11.45 pm the train arrived at Quainton Road, greeted by hundreds of locals and railway enthusiasts. At the stroke of midnight, the rails connecting the Tramway to the main line were ceremonially severed.

Quainton Road station remained open, but with the closure of the Brill Tramway it was no longer a significant junction station. A connection between the Great Central Railway and the former Buckinghamshire Railway at Calvert was opened in 1942, leaving the original A&B route to Verney Junction with no purpose other than as a diversionary route. It was closed to passengers on 6 July 1936. London Transport passenger services beyond Aylesbury were withdrawn, leaving the former GCR (part of the London and North Eastern Railway after 1923) as the only railway operating passenger services to Quainton Road.

London Transport reduced the former A&B route between Quainton Road and Verney Junction to a single track in 1939–40. LT continued to operate freight services until 6 September 1947, when the original Quainton Road–Verney Junction route was closed altogether, leaving the former GCR route from Aylesbury via Rugby as the only service still operating through Quainton Road. London Transport services were briefly restored in 1943 with the extension of the Metropolitan Line's London–Aylesbury service to Quainton Road, but this service was once more withdrawn in 1948.

Quainton Road station closed to passengers on 4 March 1963 and to goods on 4 July 1966. On 3 September 1966 the former GCR line from Aylesbury to Rugby was abandoned, leaving only the stretch from Aylesbury to Calvert, running through the now-closed Quainton Road, remaining open for use by freight trains. This remaining stretch of line was reduced to a single track shortly afterwards. The signal box at Quainton Road was abandoned on 13 August 1967, and the points connecting to the goods yard were disconnected.