Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway
[5] It was privately built in 1871 by the 3rd Duke of Buckingham as a horse tram line to transport goods between his lands around Wotton House and the national railway network.
[6] Two locomotives were bought for the line, but as it had been designed and built with horses in mind, services were very slow; trains travelled at an average speed of only 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h).
[8] Despite the backing of the wealthy Ferdinand de Rothschild, investors were deterred by the costly tunnelling proposed, and the Duke was unable to raise sufficient funds.
[9] In 1888 a cheaper scheme was proposed, in which the line would be built to a lower standard and wind around hills to avoid tunnelling.
[12] The line was rebuilt a second time in 1910, and more advanced locomotives were introduced, allowing trains to run faster.
[17] Very little trace of the Brill Tramway remains,[18] other than the former junction station at Quainton Road, now the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.
[19] When the line was opened in 1871–72, the stations were 6-inch (150 mm) high crude earth banks, held in place by wooden planks.
[20] In 1894, in preparation for the Oxford extension, Waddesdon, Westcott, Wotton and Brill stations were provided with buildings containing a booking office, waiting rooms and toilets, while Wood Siding station was equipped with a small waiting room "with shelf and drawer".
[21] Quainton Road originally consisted of two separate stations, one on the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and one on the Wotton Tramway.
[24] The section of the station serving the Aylesbury line remained open to passengers until 4 March 1963, and to goods traffic until 4 July 1966.
[26] The station, along with former wartime emergency food depots and sections of siding preserved as a demonstration line, is now the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.
[34] Aside from Quainton Road station, the two buildings at Westcott are the only significant structures associated with the Tramway to have survived.
[35] Wotton was a focal point of the line, and the site of the Tramway's forge and the stables for its horses.
[39] The station was situated on a sharp curve and, had the extension to Oxford been built, it would have needed resiting to accommodate longer and faster trains.
[31][32] Wotton station on the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway, which in 1923 had been taken over by the London and North Eastern Railway, remained open (albeit little used and served by only two trains per day in each direction) until 7 December 1953, when the line was abandoned.
It was treated as a station during the Tramway's early years and listed as such in timetables, but was never redeveloped following the conversion to locomotive haulage and its "platform" remained an earth bank with no buildings.
[48] The station was staffed by a single porter, responsible for opening the gates of a nearby level crossing and for loading and unloading freight (mainly milk);[48][49] a small, unheated hut was provided for his use.
[51] Brill was valuable as a shipment point between the dairy farms of Buckinghamshire and the markets of Aylesbury and London.
[53] In addition, a storehouse at the station held beer supplied by the breweries of Brackley and Aylesbury.
[11] Since then it has been displayed at the London Transport Museum and at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre at Quainton Road.
[13] From 1903, the Manning Wardle locomotives were replaced by Metropolitan Railway D Class 2-4-0 tank engines, numbered 71 and 72.
Their place on the O&AT was taken by two Metropolitan Railway A Class 4-4-0T locomotives numbered 23 and 41, built by Beyer, Peacock and Company in 1866 and 1869 respectively.
All nine wagons were fitted with dumb buffers, and as a consequence did not comply with Railway Clearing House standards and could not be used on other lines.
