Bramley

The station at Bramley was built quite a long time after the track had been laid through the village, opening to passengers on 1 May 1895. For many years, this Hampshire station was called ‘Bramley for Silchester’, to avoid any confusion with ‘Bramley & Wonersh’ in Surrey. It also had a goods yard until 1963.

Bramley has strong military links. In 1916, during World War One, a Command Ammunition Depot was built on land just south of the station creating an extensive military railway network on either side of the Reading to Basingstoke line. The Ministry of Munitions took over the site to the east in 1917 and to the west in 1918. At its peak, this private internal railway system amounted to over 200 miles of track linking a vast amount of stores buildings and including a marshalling yard on the west side of the main railway line. The system used its own steam engines for many years, although battery electric locos were also used from 1922 for safer operation given the explosive nature of the supplies stored at the site! The Depot was so extensive and gave work to so many that it required workmen’s trains to operate to get the staff to the widely dispersed buildings. Bramley Depot was also extremely busy during the Second World War.

By the 1960s, three diesel shunting engines had replaced all the steam engines. These Ministry of Defence-owned locomotives – numbered 421, 422 and 425 – were kept in excellent mechanical and external condition at a large maintenance depot building visible from the main railway line. The site was closed in March 1987 and to mark the occasion three special trains ran ‘The Bramley Bunker’ railtours, starting at Basingstoke then operating around some of the Bramley Depot internal rail network. There had been plans to make the diesel depot and some of the track at Bramley a base for railway enthusiasts to keep and restore locomotives, but nothing came of the scheme and the site is now used for military training exercises.