PEOPLE may feel they have taken a step back in time on Saturday when a steam engine chugs into Bicester North station.

But rest assured, the usual 90mph trains will still be running to London.

At 10.30am a GWR pannier tank engine hauling seven coaches will roll into the Buckingham Road station to recreate the first journey on the Bicester line 100 years ago.

As Chiltern Railways marks the station’s centenary, it’s hard to see how just three decades ago the line faced closure – because the Government of the day thought trains were a dying form of transport and had slashed funding.

Just 16 years ago, Chiltern boss Adrian Shooter spotted the potential of Bicester as a key station on the route to London and effectively saved it from closure.

Nowadays, trains roar through the station at 90mph, soon to be increased to 100mph, as journeys between the capital and Birmingham get quicker.

Yet it was only a few years ago that the station saw one train to London every two hours, its building were crumbling and there were few car parking spaces.

It was Mr Shooter and his team who transformed the fortunes of Bicester North in the 1990s, turning it into the busy hub it is today.

The company runs 58 trains on weekdays heading south to London Marylebone, and carries almost a million passengers a year.

And the future is set to get brighter for Rail travellers as Evergreen 3, Chiltern’s £260m Oxford-Bicester-London rail link takes shape.

The operator wants to start running services from Oxford to Marylebone via Bicester, building a new station at Water Eaton park-and-ride, just outside Kidlington, as part of the project.

Part of the plans will see Bicester Town Station rebuilt and the journey from Bicester to Oxford cut from 26 minutes to just 14.

Meanwhile, new tracks between Bicester and London will enable trains to travel at 100mph by Christmas, shaving 20 minutes off journey between Marylebone and Birmingham New Street.

Chiltern Railways manager Ian Baxter, a former child protection officer for Oxfordshire social services and mayor of Woodstock, said Bicester was a real success story for the rail firm.

He explained: “When the line was built, Bicester was a much smaller Oxfordshire market town.

“In 1967 British Rail electrified the London Euston to Birmingham line and put the old Bicester line back in the shade.

“British Rail changed it to single tracks – it was a dying line and there were threats to close the line north of High Wycombe.

“The Chiltern story is that Adrian Shooter really had the vision for it.

“In the 1990s they had started building the M40 which was really going to develop towns like Bicester, Banbury, Leamington Spa and Warwick and there was an opportunity to develop the line as well.”

Mr Shooter, who joined British Rail in the 1960s as an engineering manager, added: “I could see Bicester was growing fast and if we were able to improve services and make the trains more frequent, that would help Bicester, Banbury and Haddenham.

“The vision we had in 1994 was to make it another route to London and Birmingham, this time serving the major growing places.

“On July 23, 1996 we took over the line from British Rail and immediately started expanding the car park at Bicester. The first step was to redouble 18 miles of track towards High Wycombe.

“It’s important to remember in 1996 everybody thought the railway was going downhill.

“Privatisation was all about stopping pouring money into the railways. We thought if the railways were more attractive to passengers we could change things.”

In recent years the platform has been lengthened to cater for eight-coach trains, and the station's car park expanded to more than 700 spaces.

  • The plan for a new Oxford-London link is not the first time Bicester has been at the centre of ambitious railway plans.

The Bicester cut-off was built by the Great Western Railway to allow it to compete head-on with the rival London & North Western for lucrative traffic between London and Birmingham.

The opening of the line on July 1, 1910, meant the GWR could offer a two-hour journey time between the cities – bypassing Oxford and cutting 20 miles off the run.

The route ran from Ashendon junction, in Buckinghamshire, via Bicester to Aynho junction, south of Banbury.

It was one of the last sections of main line to be opened in Britain in the golden age of the railways, enabling the GWR to benefit from the investment it and the Great Central Railway had made in improving the GWR’s line from London to High Wycombe and Princes Risborough in the early 1900s.

The main station building and the footbridge at Bicester North station both survive largely unaltered from the line’s opening day, although no-one travelling in 1910 could have foreseen the double-deck car park now needed to cope with demand from London-bound commuters.

  • On Saturday the Centenary Steam Express will leave Banbury at 10.05am, arriving at Bicester North at 10.30am and leaving for Princes Risborough and Chinnor at 10.48am.

It will start its return journey from Chinnor at 1.45pm and is due into Bicester at about 3.10pm when deputy mayor Rose Stratford will unveil a memorial plaque.

A time capsule containing people’s memories and memorabilia of Bicester North and rail travel over the past 100 years will be buried at the station.

All tickets for the special train have been sold.