Footnotes

1: Since writing my description of the fantasy situation of the Culworth Junction link being built instead at Helmdon, I've discovered that it isn't too far from the truth that this might have happened! Before Watkin moved to the company that was to become the Great Central Railway, it appears he was a director of the Buckingham Railway, pushing the line to Banbury from Verney Junction, racing against the GWR who were building their broadgauge line north from Oxford. Banbury ended up with two stations side by side as a result, one on the LNWR (after the Buckingham Railway was absorbed) and the GWR one. GWR had deeper pockets and a more profitable route to London and on to Birmingham via Banbury, so the Buckingham line never grew to the main line it aimed to be. Further, one of the options on the route of the Northampton and Banbury Junction Railway was to go a bit north of Helmdon nearer to Culworth on almost the exact route the later GCR Banbury link would take some decades later, entering Banbury from the north rather than the south. It's actually not that proposterous then for Helmdon to have become a more significant junction town.

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