Challow railway station is a former railway station about 2 miles (3 km) south of Stanford in the Vale on the A417 road between Wantage and Faringdon. It is named after the villages of West Challow and East Challow, which are 1.5 miles (2.4 km) and 2.5 miles (4 km) southeast of the former station.
Challow station in 2007, with little remaining of the original station
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of 7 ft —later slightly widened to 7 ft 1⁄4 in —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892.
The interior of Brunel's train-shed at Temple Meads, the first Bristol terminus of the GWR, from an engraving by J. C. Bourne.
The Sonning Cutting in 1846
A broad-gauge train on mixed-gauge track
New corridor coaches on the Cornish Riviera Express
