47440 Shorthampton 18 April 1987

The road overbridge at Shorthampton, between Ascott-under-Wychwood and Charlbury, was one of my least favourite Cotswold Line locations in the 1980s, because it was so overgrown. This is one of the very few pictures that I took there at the time, and shows 47440 passing the flowering willow bushes with the diverted 1O09 08:12 Newcastle to Poole InterCity service on 18 April 1987. When the line was redoubled in 2011, all the lineside trees and bushes were removed, opening up the location for photography. I'm sad to say however, that they have now grown back again, and the location is as bad, if not worse, than this again!