Combe Halt will celebrate its 75th birthday today, and cake will be cut at 17.43 — when the two-coach train from Oxford is scheduled to pull up beside its one, short platform. The Great Western Railway opened the halt, complete with two wooden shelters made of railway sleepers, in 1935, to take car workers into the Morris factory in Cowley.

Ironic that, because, of course, most of the workers — many of whom were former agricultural labourers — could not themselves afford to buy the cars they built — and therefore used the train.

That state of affairs changed over time to such an extent that Combe Halt, along with Finstock Halt — the next stop along the Cotswold Line to Worcester — was slated for the Beeching axe in 1963, after road had eclipsed rail.

Both halts only survived, according to Chris Leigh writing in Rail Magazine, because “the local road layout, where roads crossed the railway rather than paralleling it, made it impossible to serve all the station sites with a single local bus”.

In a sense, Combe only half survived anyway, because the platform was demolished post-Beeching when the ‘Down’ line to Worcester was taken up; and even the remaining ‘Up’ platform was shortened and left without its meagre wooden shelter.

Dear Combe Halt. Speaking personally, as someone who commuted to The Oxford Times during the 1980s and 90s, I sometimes wonder how many hours I must have spent on its platform, come rain or shine? Whatever the answer it would pale into insignificance compared to the hours put in by that distinguished Latin scholar Peter Glare. Aged 85, he still regularly catches the 07.58 of a morning to his office at the Bodleian, and the 17.31 back again.

Sometimes we were the only two passengers: there was the time we had been left standing in the cold for about an hour (no information service or help line in those days) when a train marked Bognor Regis sped by in the wrong direction with a cheerful toot-toot of the horn. I kid you not.

Or the time we saw a vixen escape the hounds on the field across the lane by the skin of her teeth — and then reappear, cool and unruffled, to stroll along behind the huntsmen who were all unaware of her presence and facing into a spinney the hounds were quartering.

Sure, there were some bizarre ‘Downs’ — and one taxi driver sent to rescue us when the train was cancelled became quite a familiar face — but the ‘Ups’ outnumber them by far; which is presumably why passenger numbers are now growing: from 2,042 using the Halt in 2007/8, to 2,120 in 2008/9, according to Office of Rail Regulation statistics quoted in Rail Magazine.

For instance, a really first-class traffic jam on the A40, as glimpsed through the window of a fast-moving train carriage, must surely be one of the finest views in England.

Apt somehow that Combe Halt should be situated in the valley (or combe) in which the original village stood — before it was moved up the hill to avoid the plague in the 14th century.

The halt stands near Blenheim Saw Mill which houses one of the oldest steam beam engines in UK. And the Paddington-Worcester service was the last Western Region main line to feature steam locomotives. The final Castle class 4-6-0 was taken out of service on the route in 1964.

The guest of honour at today’s celebrations will be author Dorothy Calcutt, 90, who remembers catching the train to Oxford from Combe on the day the Halt opened. Retired farmer Geoff Green also remembers catching the train from London in 1935. There was no ticket available, so the clerk simply wrote the name of his destination on a piece of paper.

The Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton Line, now called the Cotswold Line, was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and opened in 1851. Its initials, OWW, which may still be seen on bridges along the way, were almost immediately said by passengers to stand for the Old Worse and Worse! But here is wishing the New Better and Better all the best for the next 75 years.