By Train to Bentley Priory

The Harrow & Stanmore Railway was promoted by hotel entrepreneur Frederick Gordon to improve communications with his hotel venture at Bentley Priory. The line was opened in the traditionally grand manor of the London & North Western Railway, but its final closing by "Beeching's Axe" went scarcely noticed outside the local community.

It seems impossible to believe that this line, in its heyday, was one of the busiest steam operated branch lines in the country, for all that now remains is nostalgia, and a few words and photographs to recapture the past...

By Peter G. Scott