SideTracked - High Wycombe
SideTracked Caches are intended to provide quick Cache-and-dashes at Train Stations. This is a 35mm film canister hidden near to the location of this Station and line it is not on railway property. Please remember that magnets only stick to metal and not plastic!
Please remember to sign the log when you find it.
Any online logs without a signed logsheet will result in online logs being deleted.
The original terminus station was built in 1854 after an original design by I.K. Brunel The station had one platform and a train shed that covered two broad gauge tracks, on one side of the trainshed was a single road engine shed and to the platform side booking office and waiting rooms (on the Birdcage Walk side) . The walls of the trainshed, engine shed and offices were constructed from brick and knapped flint with a slate roofs. This building remained as a station in use until 1864 when it became a goods shed. Between 1880s and 1940 various additions were made to the fabric of the old station. The building received grade two listing in 1999 due to being one of only six remaining GWR trainsheds. since listing most of the later additions were removed restoring the building to its original footprint, the only addition is the flat roof second floor extension added in 1940.
The dimensions and general design of trainshed, engine shed and office accommodation was repeated at Thame station with only the building materials different, Wycombe being built with brick and knapped flint wall while Thame was timber.
A second through station was opened on the current location in 1864 with a second platform and later a footbridge. For two years prior to this date after the extension to Thame had been made, all through trains had to reverse in and out of the old station which was not located on the new through lines. The design of the office accommodation on the second station was a copy of the office accommodation on the first station with a canopy covering the platform rather than the trainshed of the first, the building was extended as least once to it's west end.
With the building of the Great Central/Great Western Joint Railway in 1906 the station was again rebuilt to the station that is in use today with four lines between two staggered platforms and a subway. The station was originally the terminus of the Wycombe Railway line from Maidenhead, which was later extended to Aylesbury and Oxford and then in 1867 was taken over by the Great Western Railway.
In 1906 the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway line was opened through High Wycombe, linking London with the two companies' lines to the north. Much of the current Chiltern Main Line is formed from this joint line. British Rail closed the original branch line to Maidenhead on 2 May 1970 and subsequently the track was lifted. The station was transferred from the Western Region of British Rail to the London Midland Region on 24 March 1974. In November 2005 a fire in the ticket office gutted the roof of the building. The restored station building reopened in September 2007.