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Windsor Central Station now known as 'Windsor Royal Station', great for shopping, Train connections via Slough to Reading and the West and Paddington in London. This station was finally completed in 1897 in time for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations |
The Railway
Line to the Riverside Station
Unusually for a medium size town,
two railways serve Windsor, originating at main line
stations in London, Paddington and London,
Waterloo. In the 1840s Paddington Station was the
London terminus of Brunel's Great Western Railway, and
Waterloo was the terminus for the Richmond and Staines
Railway.
There was quite a struggle between the two
railway companies to be the first to open their line
into Windsor, no doubt hoping for Royal patronage. It
was a contest that the GWR won, though only by a
whisker, and only after a delay caused by a support
failure on the bridge carrying the line over the river
from Datchet. Services to Windsor and Eton Riverside
Station commenced on 1st December 1849.
The line was known as the London and South
Western Railway for many years until nationalisation
of the railways in 1948 when it became part of the
Southern Region. The line had been electrified in
1930, with the first services running on 6th July of
that year.
The goods yard at Windsor and Eton Riverside Station in the 1870s with a misty Windsor Castle, North Terrace, in the background, beyond the Home Park. In the foreground is the Lock Cut leading to Romney Lock, downstream. The trucks are loaded with coal.
[From an original stereoview of the period]
[From an original stereoview of the period kindly donated by Tim Forbes of Canada, Oct 05]
We assume this to be around 1875 also, judging by the very similar tree height.
A steam engine waits at Windsor and Eton Riverside Station. The line from Waterloo to Windsor was progressively electrified from October 1915, first to Wimbledon, then Hounslow and Kingston in 1916, with Windsor starting electric train services on 6th July 1930. The photograph above probably dates from the 1920s. Electric trains at Windsor Station in the 1940s Windsor and Eton Riverside Station in 2000. Originally designed by William Tite.
During WWII the Riverside Station was used to evacuate casualties from the bombing of London. Film exists of the injured being stretchered off a train and loaded into ambulances for the journey to local hospitals.
On 8th September 1974 the level crossing that connected the Home Park with Romney Lock was closed and replaced by a footbridge, while vehicular traffic access was now along the north side of the station, through the former goods yard and joining the original route beside the Lock Cut. The goods yard itself has become a car park.
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