Residents of Winslow, Buckinghamshire, have become unwilling experts in the sound of freight trains rumbling past their brand-new, utterly passenger-free station. The line, operational for freight since late 2024, was supposed to be carrying commuters by now. Instead, it's a monument to bureaucratic inertia.
For over a decade, ministers have hyped East West Rail as the UK's answer to Silicon Valley, linking Oxford to Cambridge via Milton Keynes. Chancellor Rachel Reeves even name-dropped it in January 2025 as the “transport link needed to make the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor a success,” promising passenger trains 'in the coming months.' Chiltern Railways was to take over in March 2025. That date came and went. Then autumn. Then end of 2025. Now? No target at all.
Local MP Callum Anderson, representing the train-less masses, diplomatically calls it “unfortunate.” But the real fun is in the blame game. The Department for Transport (DfT) and the RMT union deny that a dispute over whether two-carriage trains need guards is the main issue, though it's widely believed to be the crucial stumbling block. Rail minister Peter Hendy, in a letter, blamed the “unexpected general election of July 2024” for interrupting contract negotiations. Others call that excuse “ridiculous.”
Independent councillor Diana Blamires, who has organized protests, describes the DfT's reasoning as “nonsense, pathetic, laughable.” She notes that 4,500 people in Winslow are left taking two buses to work, while rush-hour traffic to Oxford is terrible and parking expensive. “People came to places like Winslow thinking they'd be able to get a train to a job in London,” she says. “Now it's two buses in the morning to get there.”
The project's multiple players - East West Railway Ltd, Network Rail, Chiltern Railways, the DfT - make accountability slippery. East West Railway Ltd says it handed over the completed line and station in 2024. Network Rail says it's done its bit. Chiltern says it's in the “testing and commissioning phase,” with unspecified station problems (including an emergency exit backing onto private land, now reportedly resolved). The DfT says it's “supporting Chiltern” but won't say whom it's waiting on for “services to be allowed to start.”
The RMT union, for its part, insists the delay isn't about their dispute but about “indecision, rising costs and unresolved planning issues.” They oppose driver-only operation because “it is vital there is a second safety-critical person onboard.”
Compared to the travails of HS2, this is a minor hiccup. But the failure to open a short, unelectrified railway running largely on reclaimed lines has anguished observers. The longer story includes plans for a Universal Studios theme park in Bedford, a station at Tempsford, and the eventual nationalisation of Chiltern under Great British Railways. As rail minister Hendy suggests, that might make things simpler. Or, as locals fear, it could just mean more waiting. Either way, the residents of Winslow will keep hearing the trains they can't ride.