Cherwell Valley Line

The Cherwell Valley Line is the railway line between Didcot and Banbury via Oxford. It links the Great Western Main Line and the south to the Chiltern Main Line and the Midlands. The line follows the River Cherwell for much of its route between Oxford and Banbury.

Current and former stations served

 * Banbury previously known as Banbury Bridge Street
 * Kings Sutton
 * Former station at Aynho
 * Former station at Fritwell & Somerton
 * Heyford previously known as Lower Heyford
 * Tackley
 * Former station for Bletchingdon previously known as Kirtlington
 * Former station at Kidlington previously known as Woodstock Road
 * Former halt at Wolvercote
 * Oxford
 * Former halt at Hinksey
 * Former halt at Abingdon Road
 * Radley
 * Former station at Abingdon Junction
 * Culham, formerly known as Abingdon Road
 * Appleford
 * Didcot Parkway

The former station for Bletchingdon was always spelt Bletchington. The former halt at Wolvercote was called Wolvercot Platform, with a deliberately different spelling of the village's name, to distinguish it from the London & North Western Railway's adjacent Wolvercote Halt.

Services
Passenger services are provided by CrossCountry and First Great Western. First Great Western has designated the local service between Oxford and Banbury the Oxford Canal Line.

The line carries a large and increasing volume of freight between the Port of Southampton and the English Midlands.

Tilting
With the exception of the West Coast Main Line, this route is the only route on which domestic UK trains can tilt, something of which Virgin Cross Country took advantage on trains from the WCML to Reading and beyond, utilising SuperVoyager trains that can tilt.

CrossCountry's new operator, Arriva, does not run much on the WCML, and considers it not worthwhile to activate the tilt mechanism for the short stretch of the Cherwell Valley line. For this reason many SuperVoyagers have been transferred to Virgin West Coast, who can use their tilting ability on the WCML. The majority of CrossCountry services on the Cherwell Valley line are now worked by standard non-tilting Voyager trains, and any remaining tilting Voyagers have had their tilt function disabled to improve reliability and cut costs.

River Thames
The line makes three crossings of the River Thames between Oxford and Didcot:
 * Osney Rail Bridge
 * Nuneham Railway Bridge
 * Appleford Railway Bridge

Electrification
In 1977 the Parliamentary Select Committee on Nationalised Industries recommmended considering electrification of more of Britain's rail network, and by 1979 BR presented a range of options to do so by 2000. Some of these options would have included the entire Cherwell Valley line and the Banbury — Birmingham section of what is now the Chiltern Main Line plus the Coventry to Leamington line. Under the 1979–90 Conservative governments that succeeded the 1976–79 Labour government the proposal was not implemented.

Under plans for the Great Western Electrification project announced in July 2009, the Cherwell Valley Line will be electrified from Didcot only as far as Oxford.