Cheltenham South and Leckhampton railway station
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Cheltenham South and Leckhampton railway station was a small station in Gloucestershire serving the village of Leckhampton and the southern outskirts of Cheltenham Spa. The station opened in 1881 with the opening of the Bourton-on-the-Water to Cheltenham section of the Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway, which was operated and later taken over by the Great Western Railway.
From 1891, the station was also served by trains on the Midland and South Western Junction Railway line, which branched off the Banbury and Cheltenham line at Andoversford and formed a north-south link between Cheltenham to Swindon, Andover and the south coast. The M&SWJR had running rights over the GWR line.
The station was originally called just "Leckhampton", but acquired its longer name in 1906 when a through express train service between Newcastle upon Tyne and Swansea was routed along the Banbury to Cheltenham line: the express did not pass through any of the main Cheltenham stations, and the renaming of Leckhampton, where it made a stop, was intended to show passengers that there was a Cheltenham service on the train. It was renamed again in 1952 as "Cheltenham Leckhampton".
Cheltenham South and Leckhampton was a small station with a brick building. The line through it was particularly busy during the First World War and the Second World War with heavy troop and machinery movements on the M&SWJR. But traffic declined rapidly after the Second World War, and the station also faced competition from road transport services.
The M&SWJR line closed to passenger traffic in September 1961, and services on the Banbury to Cheltenham line were withdrawn on 15 October 1962, when Cheltenham Leckhampton station closed. There is no trace of the station today.
[edit] Reference
- Mike Oakley, Gloucestershire Railway Stations, 2003, Dovecote Press, Wimborne, ISBN 1 904349 24 2, pp41-42