On a photographic voyage of discovery, Chris Gordon Watford recollects a 1954 visit to Kemble and its two branches and reveals some of the back story of the junction station and all of its routes.
Railway branch lines for me to explore, without extra travelling. As a railway modeller, I wasn’t expecting to find Kemble to be of much interest, as I assumed it would be far too large to fit in anyone’s layout, but I was in for a surprise when I got there. I think it is fair to describe Kemble station as quirky – read on!
The history of Kemble is interesting, to say the least. The Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway (C&GWUR) had an ambitious scheme to build a double-track line between Cheltenham and Swindon and include a Cirencester branch, but it quickly ran out of money and only constructed the section from Swindon to Kemble as double-track, and then as a single track line on to Cirencester; this opened on 31 May 1841, so the same day as the GWR extended from Hay Lane (near Wootton Bassett) to Chippenham.
Supported by the Great Western Railway and leased and worked by that company from the outset, the single line Cirencester branch was one of the first on the system, but it was not initially worked by what you might consider to be ‘branch’ trains. Instead, GWR notices of the era advertised services from Paddington to Chippenham and the ‘Cheltenham line’, the latter a rather misleading term for Cirencester, but a stage coach linked Cirencester and Cheltenham from the outset, a journey of 16 or so miles. Six ‘long trains’ were advertised to the two termini from London, and there were seven weekday departures from Cirencester, including the 1.40am mail service.
