MOVES to reopen the mothballed railway line linking Oxford, Bicester and Bletchley have won the backing of Britain's biggest rail freight company.

English Welsh & Scottish Railway has put the project on a 'Super 16' list of capacity improvement schemes it says will allow rail to win more freight traffic from the roads.

Local authorities have been fighting a long campaign to persuade the Government to bring back passenger trains on the route, to link Oxford and Bicester with Milton Keynes and Bedford.

Also on the EWS list is the plan to raise clearances under bridges on the route between Southampton docks and the West Midlands, via Didcot, Oxford and Banbury, to allow 9ft 6in-high shipping containers to be carried on conventional rail wagons, rather than expensve, specially-built, low-floor wagons used at present.