The lost Banbury to Cheltenham direct railway B&CDR A short quote below about the line from the pages of wikipedia, The full information can be found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banbury_and_Cheltenham_Direct_Railway The Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway (B&CDR) was a railway company through the Cotswolds in England that built a line between points near Banbury and Cheltenham . Its principal objective, as well as a general rural rail service, was the conveyance of iron ore from the East Midlands to South Wales . The B&CDR opened its western section, from Bourton-on-the-Water to a junction near Cheltenham, in 1881, and its eastern section, from Chipping Norton to a junction at Kings Sutton , near Banbury, in 1887. The company was always short of money, and the timescale of construction was correspondingly lengthy. When the extensions opened, the Great Western Railway worked the B&CDR line and the two earlier branches as a single...