A platform called Alton Park was opened near the hospital; it was available for visitors to the hospital only. Wartime suspension and re-instatement later During World War I there was a demand for railway track equipment to lay in occupied France, and requisition allocations were given by the War Office to the railway companies. To fulfil its obligation the LSWR decided to close the Basingstoke and Alton line at short notice and recover the track from there. The line was heavily loss making, and the selection was commercially driven. The line closed on 1 January 1917. In 1921 pressure began to develop locally for the line to be reopened. A Board Meeting in 1921 considered the financial prospects, and was informed that the line had actually cost £107,842 to build. In 1913 (the last full year before the war) receipts had been £1,232 and operational costs had been £5,400. The considerable pressure to reopen led to a hearing by a House of Lords Committee lasting three days in May 1923. The Grouping of the railways had just been implemented, following the Railways Act 1921. Many emotional arguments were put by those claiming that the Southern Railway, as successor to the LSWR, had an obligation to expend considerable sums to rebuild a heavily loss-making minor railway. Despite objective evidence, the Lords Committee called upon the Southern Railway to reconsider – effectively an instruction to reopen the line. The line reopened on 18 August 1924. The crossing loop at Herriard was not reinstated. There were three trains each way daily, except Sundays. Despite record loadings on the first Basingstoke market day following this event, gross receipts for the first two weeks totalled only £94 against wage costs alone of £102. Bus competition, and filming In 1927 a local bus operator started running a route between Alton and Basingstoke. Running through the centre of the villages served, the bus immediately attracted custom and the light carryings on the railway reduced correspondingly. In 1928 filming took place at Salter Hatch level crossing. Gainsborough Pictures were making a film about contrived train crashes, planned to harm railway business in support of a road bus operator. The Southern Railway co-operated with the filming, and provided an obsolete steam engine and six coaches, which were destroyed in the crash. A steam lorry loaded with five tons of ballast and a charge of explosive was on the level