The point where the London Metropolitan railway should have met with Oxford to Cambridge trains.
I say ‘should’ because they seldom did. Well, not without a tedious journey and long wait involved.
By the mid-sixties ‘Metroland’ was more or less all over bar the shouting and the idea to be able to stop an Oxbridge train and change and an isolated rural ‘junction’ in order to board an even slower Metropolitan train bound for Baker Street was soon forgotten.
The problem was, it was easier and faster to travel from Oxford and Cambridge into London than it was to bugger about going across isolated English countryside and wait for a train miles from nowhere.
Another problem with ‘Verney Junction’ was that there is sod all there except for the old stationmaster’s house and two platforms in the middle of a field. I mean… ‘WTF!’
Anyway… by 1967 the trains no longer called at ‘Verney Junction’ and all the Metro trains were terminating at ‘Quainton Road’ in Amersham. The railway beyond now deciding to go nowhere fast.
The ‘Verney Junction’ land has long gone under the hammer and almost fifty years later even its rails have gone.
But you can still walk the track bed and think of what might have been. You can even follow the track bed on Streetview.
The Station was called ‘Verney Junction’ after some rich land-owner called ‘Verney’ (not ‘Reg’) who owned the land upon which the station was built.
Funny enough that geezer ‘Verney’ was the brother-in-law of Florence Nightingale.
How’s that for high jinks?
‘All aboard the ‘Slowcoach Express’ to ‘Baker Street’.
If you are in a hurry, it might be quicker if you walked.
