Cherwell Valley Line

Cherwell Valley line
Appleford railway station
Overview
Type	Heavy rail
System	National Rail
Status	Operational
Locale	Oxfordshire, South East England
Stations	7
Operation
Owner	Network Rail
Operator(s)	CrossCountry Great Western Railway
Rolling stock	Class 43 "High Speed Train" Class 165 "Turbo" Class 166 "Turbo Express" Class 180 "Adelante" Class 220 "Voyager" Class 221 "Super Voyager"
Technical
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge

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.

The former station for Bletchingdon was always spelt "Bletchington", which is an alternative spelling for that village's toponym. 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 and North Western Railway's nearby Wolvercote Halt.

Passenger services are provided by CrossCountry and Great Western Railway. GWR markets 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, much of it in container trains run by Freightliner.

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 CrossCountry took advantage on trains from the WCML to Reading and beyond, using 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.