Thanks for this.

Mark

 
It was suggested in the Westminster Gazette of 12 April 1910 that the construction of the Ashendon to Aynho line, together with the Great Central and Great Western Joint Line, gave GWR the same extra capacity as quadrupling through Oxford almost to Banbury. Thus it is unlikely they would do it later than that, or before they had done the main line into Didcot (1892). By then the possibility of the GW/GCR route was presumably already known about, so the window for ever quadrupling Didcot-Oxford narrows to little or nothing.

 
Did GWR ever form the intention to quadruple track Oxford to Didcot? I'm thinking of the way that line increasingly sat at the centre of a set of converging lines - at first, to the south, from two directions on the GW main line itself - and the Didcot Newbury and Southampton line then came onto the scene - and then to the north, the lines to Rugby Birmingham and then to Worcester and to Wolverhampton - and later to Fairford, and also the Banbury to Woodford Halse link. This collection joined by a double track railway.

Perhaps the relief of this stretch by the building of the 1910 line via Bicester took the focus elsewhere from any ambition to quadruple the track south to Didcot.

Was there an intention though? Plans, or perhaps an early intention to route the Great Western Main Line itself via Oxford?

Turning to the present day: the relieving line via Thame long closed, a busier network ... and there's Oxford, still connected to Didcot by a double track railway with three 'Inconvenient' intermediate stations, no offence intended. There must be a ghost of the 'If only' here, and also, how those stations avoided being zapped I don't know.

Mark