Chambers Crossing Halt railway station

The section of the Honeybourne Line from Stratford-upon-Avon to Honeybourne was opened by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway on 9 July 1859,^[1][2] but it was over forty years before Chambers Crossing Halt was opened on 17 October 1904 by the Great Western Railway.^[3] A single platform was built to the south of the level crossing over a lane which ran from Weston-on-Avon to Clifford Chambers.^[4] A crossing keeper's cottage had been built here in around 1899 and by the time the halt opened, the crossing was gated and protected by signals.^[4] The gates were operated by a ground frame on the west side of the line to the north of the crossing.^[4] When the line was doubled in 1908, the frame was relocated to the opposite site of the crossing, adjacent to the keeper's cottage.^[4] A second platform was added on the Up side around this time at a cost of £75 (equivalent to £10,000 in 2025).^[5][4] The platforms, each of which was 100 ft (30 m) for the steam railmotor service, had no passenger facilities, only lamps and the running in boards.^[4]

The timetable for April 1910 shows that Chambers Crossing Halt was served by seven railmotors in each direction between Honeybourne and Cheltenham, with some running to and from Evesham.^[6] An additional service ran from Honeybourne to Broadway and back.^[6] Due to low patronage and the outbreak of the First World War,^[7] the station, along with two other halts opened on the same date (Evesham Road Crossing Halt and Broad Marston Halt) closed on 17 July 1916 as a wartime economy measure.^[8][9] It is thought unlikely that there are any photographs of the station in existence due to its short lifetime and its unremarkable appearance.^[7]

Freight services continued to pass through the station until November 1976 when the line itself was closed.^[1] The tracks between the current Stratford station and Honeybourne were taken up in 1979.^[10]

The trackbed between Stratford-upon-Avon Racecourse Platform and Long Marston lay disused for ten years until 1989 when, in a joint venture between Sustrans and Warwickshire County Council, it was made into the 5 mi (8.0 km) Stratford Greenway for cycling and walking.^[11][12] The crossing cottage survives as a private residence.^[13]

The long-term aspiration of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, a heritage railway formed in 1976 to keep the Honeybourne Line open, is to reopen the line as far as Stratford from its base at Toddington.^[14]