Talk:Verney Junction railway station

Former companies

I'm not sure that the infobox presents a true picture of the situation. That and the article seem heavily biased towards the A&BR, the Met and successors; but the Buckinghamshire Rly got there some eighteen years earlier. After all, the junction was named after Sir Harry Verney, who was Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Railway. The line from Bletchley to Banbury opd 1 May 1850; Verney Jc-Islip 1 October 1851; Islip-Oxford (GWR) ?? ; Oxford Rewley Road 20 May 1851. Also, I can't find anything which suggests that the GWR was ever involved here. Running powers from Aylesbury, possibly; but as a co-owner? Unlikely. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:17, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Although the Buckinghamshire Railway constructed the line on which Verney Junction stood, the station only came into existence once the A&B completed its line to Aylesbury. Up to that point, the LNWR (which effectively controlled the BR) had been hostile to the idea of an interchange at this point. This hostility continued after the station's opening which caused the A&B to enlist the help of the GWR in order to run services to its joint Aylesbury station and beyond. Lamberhurst (talk) 20:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, but this certainly doesn't justify barely mentioning what was always the main operator of the site. I've rewritten the article accordingly. 85.211.110.248 (talk) 15:56, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Isolated? (BRD discussion)

We have some debate on whether the word "isolated" is appropriate. It's not exactly Corrour, is it? But nor was it built to serve any settlement: the settlement just grew around it. You could say much the same thing about Bletchley, a small village on the outskirts of Fenny Stratford until the Buckinghamshire Railway from Oxford and the Bedford Railway made Bletchley a junction station on the WCML and the town "just growed and growed" around it. As isolation goes, VJ barely registers. I am persuaded that it is OTT to use the word without the support of an RS. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:20, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

It's the classic station-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. Originally, Verney Junction had no station and was merely the place where the Buckinghamshire Railway's two routes (to Banbury and to Oxford) diverged, rather like Weaver Junction. To quote from

• Day, John R. (1963). The Story of London's Underground (1st ed.). Westminster: London Transport. p. 32.

The junction ... was called Verney Junction after Sir Harry Verney, chairman of the Buckinghamshire Railway; there was not much else in the locality to call it after. The junction was created something like 18 years before the station, which was built when the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway reached that point - it never got as far as Buckingham over its own tracks. The purpose of the station was to provide interchange between the two railways, there was no originating traffic to speak of. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:05, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Railway Clearing House map annotation

I deleted user:Blythwood's annotation about the Claydon-Calvert chord because it is true but doesn't belong in this article. It was a good point, though, so I have updated Claydon to add the annotation there, with a link to the later OS 6" map [which, as ever seems to be the case, has its edge in the wrong place]. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:34, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

The chord was built something like thirty years after the junction diagram (n.b. not map) was drawn, to assist with military train movement during WWII. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:49, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I wasn't sure about that-my feeling was that since it was referred to in the text (although not near VJ it made the QR-VJ line superfluous) it was worth noting that it was missing from the diagram, but I accept that it made the caption too long. I've now just added the clarification that it faces eastwards into the body text. Blythwood (talk) 22:02, 29 October 2020 (UTC)