File:British Rail Class 66 No. 66006 at Kennet & Avon - September 2020.jpg

English: Bedwyn to Pewsey on the Kennet & Avon Canal. On 15 September 2020, DBC Class 66 no.66006 climbs steadily towards Savernake Summit, around a mile ahead, with the 'binliner', a train of household rubbish from the collection station at Northolt, London, heading for the SITA Avonside processing plant near Severn Beach.

This railway route is known as the Berks & Hants line, although it does not enter Hampshire / Hants at any point, taking its name from the originating company that failed to complete its plans. It opened from Hungerford to Devizes on 11 November 1862, there connecting with a short line coming the other way from Holt, thereby providing a route to Bristol and westward to Weymouth. From 1900 many trains ran direct to Westbury on a new line opened that year, and completion of a route from Westbury to Taunton gave a new main line to the Devon and Cornwall, the main use of the line today.

The canal is the Kennet & Avon, constructed between 1794 and 1810 to link the already navigable rivers of the title. The Dundas Aqueduct was not completed until 1810, but still ahead of the Caen Hill Lock Flight near Devizes, completed later that year. As well as facilitating the growth of many other industries, it was a major industry in its own right, carrying vast amounts of goods until the coming of the Great Western Railway from 1835 gradually took away its loads. After a last commercial consignment in 1948 the whole fell into disuse, with a last recorded through passage in 1951.

Attempts to abandon the waterway were opposed by local authorities and many individuals, and in 1963 restoration started in earnest, both by volunteers and British Waterways, and on 17 July 1990 the first boats made a through passage.