Chesham branch
Encyclopedia
The Chesham branch is a short single-track railway branch line
in Buckinghamshire
, England. Although no part of it is within London and it runs entirely above ground, it is owned and operated by the London Underground
. It runs from a junction at Chalfont & Latimer
with the Metropolitan line
and the Chiltern Railways
route to Aylesbury
, and runs for 3.89 miles (6.26 km) northwest to its only other station at Chesham
. Its terminus at Chesham has since 1961 been the westernmost and since 1994 the northernmost point on the London Underground network.
The line was built as part of Edward Watkin
's scheme to turn his Metropolitan Railway
(MR) into a direct rail route between London and Manchester
, and it was envisaged that a station outside Chesham would be an intermediate stop on a through route running north to connect with the London and North Western Railway
(LNWR). Deteriorating relations between the MR and LNWR led to the MR instead expanding to the northwest via Aylesbury, and the scheme to connect with the LNWR was abandoned. By this time much of the land needed for the section of line as far as Chesham had been bought. As Chesham was at the time the only significant town near the MR's new route, it was decided to build the route as far as Chesham, and to complete the connection with the LNWR at a future date if it proved desirable. Local residents were unhappy at the proposed station site outside Chesham, and a public subscription raised the necessary additional funds to extend the railway into the centre of the town. The Chesham branch opened in 1889 and Chesham became the terminus of the MR.
While construction of the Chesham line was underway, the Metropolitan Railway was also expanding to the northwest, and in 1892 the extension to Aylesbury and on to Verney Junction
opened. The Chesham line became a branch line, with most trains operating as a shuttle service connecting to the main line rather than as through trains to London. The opening in 1899 of the Great Central Railway
, Edward Watkin's connection between London and Manchester, as well as the highly successful Metro-land
campaign encouraging Londoners to move to the rural areas served by the railway, led to an increase in traffic in the area, although the Chesham branch was less affected by development than most other areas served by the railway. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership and became the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground. London Underground aimed to concentrate on their core business of passenger transport in London, and saw the rural and freight lines in Buckinghamshire as an expensive anomaly. The day-to-day operation of the Chesham branch was transferred to the London and North Eastern Railway
, although London Transport retained control. In 1960 the line was electrified, and from then 1962 on was operated by London Underground A Stock
trains.
In the 1970s and 1980s decaying infrastructure and the withdrawal of subsidies brought the future of the line into doubt. As one of its last acts the Greater London Council
paid for the replacement of two bridges on the line, allowing operations to continue. The centenary of the line in 1989 saw a renewal of interest and an upgrading of the trains between Chalfont & Latimer and London Marylebone station made commuting more practical, and usage of the line stabilised. The introduction of London Underground S Stock
in 2010 led to the replacement of the shuttle service with half-hourly through trains to and from London.
is bisected by the Chiltern Hills
, which rise sharply and cross the county from northeast to southwest. Although the fertile soil and good drainage of the Chilterns provides ideal conditions for farming, the steep hills historically made travelling difficult. Few sizeable settlements developed in Buckinghamshire, and what roads existed were of poor quality.
The county town of Aylesbury
, immediately north of the Chilterns and 37 miles (59.5 km) from the City of London
, was an important agricultural centre. As London grew, the significance of Buckinghamshire as a provider of food increased, particularly following the development of the Aylesbury duck
in the 18th century. Large numbers of horses, cattle and Aylesbury ducks were herded along the roads to London's huge livestock market at Smithfield. The strain placed on the roads by bulk livestock movements led to the introduction of a network of high quality toll roads in the area in the 18th century. The roads crossing the Chilterns followed the valley of the River Misbourne
through Amersham
or the River Bulbourne
through Berkhamsted
. These roads greatly improved travel in the area, reducing the journey time from Aylesbury to Oxford or London to a single day.
Between 1793 and 1800 the Grand Junction Canal
canal was built, connecting London to the Midlands
. The canal followed the course of the River Bulbourne through the Chilterns, and included a branch to Aylesbury. For the first time the coal and industrial products of northern England and London could be cheaply supplied to Buckinghamshire, and grain and timber from Buckinghamshire's farms could easily be shipped to market. The route taken by the Grand Junction Canal ran through the east of the county, leaving the Chiltern towns of southern Buckinghamshire isolated. When Robert Stephenson
's London and Birmingham Railway
opened in 1838 it paralleled the route of the canal through Buckinghamshire. Although the short 1839 Aylesbury Railway linked Aylesbury to the London and Birmingham Railway, the rest of central Buckinghamshire remained unconnected to the railway and canal networks.
had historically been an important manufacturing centre. In 1853 the town held three flour mills, three sawmills, three breweries, two paper mills and a silk mill, while of the town's 6,000 inhabitants 30 were recognised as master manufacturers. However, the local economy suffered badly from a lack of connections to the new transport networks. In the 1840s coal cost almost three times more to buy in Chesham than to buy in Berkhamsted, and it took over 2 hours for passengers to travel by road from Chesham to the most convenient railway station at Watford.
Between 1845, the height of the railway bubble, and the 1880s numerous schemes were put forward for railways to Chesham. The most significant was an 1845 scheme for an orbital railway bypassing London to connect the railways entering London from the north, west and south; this route was to pass through Chesham. The scheme was abandoned, as was an 1853 proposal by railway entrepreneur and former Member of Parliament
for Buckingham
Harry Verney
for a railway line from Watford to Wendover
via Rickmansworth
and Amersham
(around two miles (3 km) from Chesham). Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury
, whose Watford and Rickmansworth Railway
had opened in 1862, proposed extensions from Rickmansworth to Chesham and Aylesbury, but failed to attract funding and abandoned the scheme. To the north of Chesham, the London and North Western Railway
(LNWR) promoted a railway link between the Great Northern Railway
station at Harpenden
and the LNWR's station at Boxmoor
, which would run on to terminate at Chesham. The LNWR baulked at the cost of the earthworks necessary to reach Chesham and the southern stage of the proposal was abandoned; the line between Harpenden and Boxmoor
eventually opened in 1877. (The Harpenden–Boxmoor section was never completed; trains to Boxmoor terminated nearby at Heath Park Halt, and passengers to and from Boxmoor had to complete their journey by horse or horse-drawn bus.) In 1887 a 3' 6" gauge
tramway was proposed, which was to run through the streets of Chesham and on to Boxmoor, but the proposal was abandoned owing to a lack of funds and opposition from the operators of toll roads around Boxmoor.
opened, the first railway station connecting London with the industrial heartlands of the West Midlands and Lancashire. Railways were banned by a Parliamentary commission from operating in London itself, and thus the station was built on what was then the northern boundary of the city. Other main line termini north of London soon followed at Paddington (1838), Bishopsgate
(1840), Fenchurch Street
(1841), King's Cross (1852) and St Pancras
(1868). All were built outside the built-up area of the city, making them inconvenient to reach. Charles Pearson
(1793–1862) had proposed the idea of an underground railway connecting the City of London with the relatively distant London main line rail termini in around 1840. In 1854 to promote the scheme he commissioned the first ever traffic survey, determining that each day 200,000 walked into the City of London, 44,000 travelled by omnibus, and 26,000 travelled in private carriages. A Parliamentary Commission backed Pearson's proposal over other schemes.
Despite concerns about vibrations causing subsidence of nearby buildings, the problems of compensating the many thousands of people whose homes were destroyed during the digging of the tunnel, and fears that the tunnelling might accidentally break through into Hell, construction began in 1860. The new railway was built beneath the existing New Road
, running from the Great Western Railway
's terminus at Paddington to Farringdon and the meat market of Smithfield. On 9 January 1863 the line opened as the Metropolitan Railway
(MR), the world's first underground passenger railway. The MR was successful and grew steadily, extending its own services and acquiring other local railways in the areas north and west of London.
In 1872 Edward Watkin
(1819–1901) was appointed as the Metropolitan Railway's Chairman. A director of many railway companies, he had a vision of unifying a string of railway companies to create a single route running from Manchester via London to an intended Channel Tunnel
and on to France. In 1873 Watkin entered negotiations to take control of the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway
and a section of the former Buckinghamshire Railway
running north from Verney Junction
to Buckingham. He planned to extend the MR north from London to Aylesbury to join the existing lines and create a direct route from London to the north of England. He also proposed to extend a short rail branch which ran from the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway to the small town of Brill
, known as the Brill Tramway
, southwest to Oxford, and thus create a through route from London to Oxford. Rail services between Oxford and London at this time were poor, and although still an extremely roundabout route, had the scheme been completed it would have formed the shortest route from London to Oxford, Aylesbury, Buckingham and Stratford upon Avon. The Duke of Buckingham, chairman of the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and owner of the Brill Tramway, was enthusiastic, and authorisation for the scheme was sought from Parliament. Parliament did not share the enthusiasm of Watkin and the Duke, and in 1875 the Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire Union Railway Bill was rejected.
Watkin did, however, obtain consent to extend the MR to Harrow
, roughly 12 miles (19.3 km) northwest of London, an extension which opened in 1880. The Harrow line was further extended to Rickmansworth in 1887. Rickmansworth at this time was a small town with a population of only 1,800; to generate passenger traffic for the new station, a horse bus service between Chesham and Rickmansworth opened on 1 September 1887.
In anticipation of the A&B refusing to cooperate, a tentative agreement was reached with the London and North Western Railway, with whom Watkin was on good terms, for the MR to build a route via Chesham to connect to LNWR mainline. This scheme would provide the LNWR with an alternative route into London when necessary, while providing Watkin with his long-sought connection to the north. The land required for an intermediate station near Chalfont St Giles
and a line between there and a site outside Chesham was purchased. Agreement was reached with the LNWR that the costs of building the line would be shared equally by the MR and LNWR in return for the LNWR having running rights to Rickmansworth, and an Act of Parliament authorising the extension was obtained in 1885.
After the Act of Parliament had been granted, membership of the board of the LNWR changed, and they abandoned their support for the extension. By this time, the MR had bought most of the land between Rickmansworth and Chesham required for that section of the route.
While the route to the LNWR via Chesham had been abandoned, much of the land needed for the section south of Chesham had already been bought. As Chesham, with a population in 1882 of 6,500, was the most significant town in the area through which the MR was building, the MR decided to build the section of line between Chalfont and Chesham as a branch line
despite Chesham no longer being on the proposed through route to the north. The planned route to the LNWR would have passed to the east of Chesham, and the proposed site of the station was in Millfields, southwest of the town. (Although the extension to the LNWR was abandoned, the MR continued to buy land between Chesham and Tring
for some years afterwards, in anticipation of the scheme being revived.)
Although work had begun on the Millfields station, including the completion of the station hotel (now the Unicorn pub), the population of Chesham were unhappy at the station being built such a distance from the town. With the extension to meet the LNWR abandoned the railway no longer needed to curve away from the town, and a public subscription raised £2,000 fund a 71-chain (1,562-yd; 1,428 m) extension to a site near the town centre. Construction of the branch to Chesham began in late 1887.
, which would have been the most convenient route to Chesham, the route out of Rickmansworth was intentionally built on higher ground to reduce the steep climb over the Chilterns towards Aylesbury, and thus rose steadily from Rickmansworth to a hilltop station at Amersham. At Chalfont Road station
(renamed Chalfont & Latimer in 1915), near Chalfont St Giles, the line to Chesham split from the line to Aylesbury. With a total length of 3 miles 56 chains (3 mi 1,232 yd; 5,955 m), the single-track Chesham branch ran alongside the Aylesbury line for a short distance, before curving down the slope of the Chess Valley at a gradient of around 1 in 66. Chalk from the railway's cutting
along the Chess Valley was used to build an embankment to bring the railway into the town centre. Bridging the watercress beds of the Chess Valley proved problematic, and the cost of the line exceeded its estimate. Additional costs were incurred by the laying of temporary track in early 1889 to allow the directors of the MR a trial trip along the route.
On 15 May 1889 a demonstration train comprising two carriages and two locomotives ran along the newly completed line from Chesham to Rickmansworth, carrying the subscribers who had funded the extension and representatives of the local authorities and School Boards covering the areas through which the new line ran. (As no Metropolitan Railway train had yet run through to Chesham on the finished line, the train from Chesham to Rickmansworth was drawn by two locomotives belonging to the contractors who had built the line, rather than by MR engines. A third engine ran ahead of the demonstration train to act as a pilot.) A second train carried the directors of the Metropolitan Railway from London to Rickmansworth, collected those passengers who had ridden the demonstration train from Chesham to Rickmansworth, and continued to Chesham.
As the line had not yet formally been approved for opening by the Railway Inspectorate, the MR requested that the local authorities not celebrate the event. However, public interest was high and schools closed for the day. Large crowds gathered around the station and along the line, and a banner reading "Long looked for, come at last" was hung across Chesham station. As the train pulled into Chesham, it was greeted by celebratory gunfire as it drew into the town, and a band at the station played See the Conquering Hero Comes. The party alighted at the newly built Chesham goods depot, which had been decorated as a banqueting hall for the occasion, and an opening ceremony was conducted outside by Edward Watkin and local dignitary and railway financier Ferdinand de Rothschild before the group entered the goods depot for a celebratory meal. Watkin gave a speech recollecting George Stephenson
's desire, fifty years earlier, to see the first mainline railway built along the route now being taken by the Metropolitan Railway, joked that he hoped the easy access to London would not lead to the rural nature of the area being displaced by "a sudden influx of cockneys", and spoke of his desire to see the connection northwards to the LNWR completed.
The line was formally inspected by the Railway Inspectorate on 1 July 1889, and the first official service on the line left Chesham for London's Baker Street at 6.55 am on 8 July 1889. Throughout the day large crowds flocked to Chesham station to watch the trains, and the arrival and departure of each train at Chesham was greeted with peal
s of the bells of St. Mary's Church
. Over the course of the day 1,500 passengers travelled on the line, and 4,300 used the line in its first week of operations.
Following the opening of the line, 17 trains per weekday ran in each direction at intervals of one hour from around 7 am to around 11 pm. The initial trains were drawn by Metropolitan Railway A and B Class
locomotives. Most trains stopped at all stations, but a fast trains each morning ran between Chesham and Baker Street, taking 50 minutes from start to finish. On Sundays, trains again ran at hourly intervals, but only 12 trains per day ran and there was a three-hour gap in services in the morning to allow the railway's staff to attend church.
The opening of the railway dramatically ended Chesham's isolation. Commuting to London became possible for the first time, as did affordable excursions to the seaside resort
s on the south and east coasts. The products of the area's industries and farms could for the first time be shipped cheaply to the markets of London, and London newspapers arrived each morning at 7.28 am, in time for delivery.
alongside the up platform for trains to Chesham. A run-around loop was built to allow locomotives reversing in the bay platform always to be at the front of their trains. It was built outside the station, meaning locomotives reversing on the Chesham line were obliged to push their trains out of the station before performing the manoeuvre.
The station was renamed "Chalfont & Latimer" in 1915, although station signage was inconsistent and on absorption by London Transport in 1933 its roundel
signs read simply "Chalfont". Increased passenger numbers strained the station's minimal facilities, and it was eventually redeveloped with extended shelters and improved waiting rooms in 1927. The platforms were extended during the electrification works of 1957–60.
The Metropolitan Railway Act 1885 had given Watkin permission to extend the line from Chesham to connect with the LNWR at Tring. Thus, although it was the terminus of the line, Chesham station
was designed with a revival of the LNWR extension scheme in mind. The small station building was set to one side of the tracks to allow for a possible extension onwards. The station had a single platform, with a run-around loop and turntable alongside, together with a coaling station and water tank. The station was lit by gas light until 1925; the local gas works, which consumed around 5,000 tons of coal each year, threatened to withdraw their coal traffic from the line if the station were fitted with electric lighting. While Chalfont Road station initially served a sparsely populated rural area (the village of Little Chalfont
had not yet grown around the station), Chesham station was busy, and at the time of its opening had a full staff of a stationmaster, two ticket inspectors, two clerks, two porters
and two collectors.
Chesham also had extensive goods facilities, particularly for coal; the goods yard was initially equipped with a mobile 5-ton
crane, replaced by a fixed 8-ton crane between 1898–1900. The outward transport of watercress
, a major local industry, also generated significant traffic. During the electrification of the line in 1957–60 the station was equipped with a bay platform for passenger trains, to allow it to accommodate both through services to and from Baker Street and the Chalfont & Latimer–Chesham shuttle simultaneously. This bay platform was closed on 29 November 1970 and is now a garden.
The Metropolitan Railway's passenger coaches, dating from 1870 and designed for underground use within London, were not fitted with heating until 1895. Consequently, both stations were also equipped with equipment for heating footwarmers, which would be distributed to passengers during cold weather.
, and the temporary station was abandoned.) The line to Chesham became a branch line, generally operated by a shuttle service between Chalfont Road and Chesham, although some trains at peak periods continued to run between London and Chesham. The MR had bought a number of Metropolitan Railway C Class
locomotives to replace the ageing A and B class engines, but these performed poorly on the London-Aylesbury line and were soon replaced by the Metropolitan Railway D Class
. As a consequence, the C class engines were often used on the Chesham shuttle services.
While construction of the Chesham and Aylesbury lines was underway Watkin continued to press for the extension from Chesham to the LNWR, as did prominent manufacturers in Chesham. However, construction of the extensions had left the MR seriously exposed financially, forcing the board to cut dividends in July 1889. At a Special General Meeting on 12 February 1890 matters came to a head. Shareholders endorsed the decision to acquire the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and authorised the MR to acquire the moribund Brill Tramway, which connected with the A&BR at Quainton Road station
, but blocked the expensive extension beyond Chesham, as well as Watkin's proposed extension to Moreton Pinkney
to the north. (Watkin's Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
was refused consent at the time to build south to connect with the MR at Moreton Pinkney, which would have rendered the Moreton Pinkney branch an inevitably loss-making branch line serving a very lightly populated area. Watkin was determined to build this section as a vital segment in his vision of a London–Manchester railway, and proposed that if the MR would not build this section, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway would build the line themselves and lease it to the MR. The MR board refused to have anything to do with the scheme. Moreton Pinkney was eventually served by Watkin's railway network in 1899 as Culworth railway station
on the Great Central Railway
.)
In 1894 Edward Watkin suffered a stroke. Although he nominally remained a director of his railway companies, he resigned all his railway chairmanships and his influence was effectively ended. With the connection at Aylesbury complete, the Metropolitan Railway reached 50 miles (80.5 km) northwest of London, and his planned route between London and northern England was almost complete. Watkin's Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
continued to build southwards from its southernmost point at Annesley
, reaching Quainton Road station on the former A&BR in 1899 and completing the north-south link, the Great Central Railway
(GCR), in time for Watkin to see his vision completed before his death in 1901.
was travelling home after visiting a friend in Wendover; the MR signalman allowed a slow goods train to run in front of the royal train, causing the King to arrive late back in London. The MR management also refused the GCR permission to install points to connect their engine shed at Aylesbury to the railway line, on the grounds that the land for the shed had been bought clandestinely. Eventually a parallel set of tracks was built for the GCR between Harrow and London, running alongside the MR to a separate terminus at Marylebone, a short distance from Baker Street. The GCR continued to share the less-congested section between Quainton Road and Harrow—including Chalfont Road station—with the MR.
With the hostile Metropolitan Railway controlling the GCR's only approach to London through Quainton Road and Aylesbury, GCR General Manager William Pollitt
decided to create a link with the Great Western Railway to create a second route into London which bypassed all MR property. In 1899 the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
began construction of a new line, commonly known as the Alternative Route, to link the GWR's existing station at Princes Risborough to the new Great Central line. The line ran from Princes Risborough north to meet the Great Central at Grendon Underwood
, about three miles (5 km) north of Quainton Road, thus bypassing Quainton Road altogether. Although formally an independent company, in practice the new line was operated as a part of the Great Central Railway. The new route opened in 1906, and a substantial part of the GCR's traffic to and from London was diverted onto the Alternative Route, damaging the profitability of the MR's railway operations.
The MR management were horrified at the potential loss of income and restarted negotiations with the GCR, and a 1906 agreement meant that GCR traffic was shared between the old and new routes. Management of the shared route north of Harrow alternated every five years between the MR and GCR. (A proposed link between Marylebone and the sub-surface section of the Metropolitan Railway, which would have allowed GCR trains to run across London via the MR-controlled Thames Tunnel and on to the south coast, was abandoned.) The sharing arrangement meant through trains running from Chesham to Marylebone, as well as the MR terminus at Baker Street, and that the branch was worked by GCR trains as well as the ageing MR rolling stock.
tube lines improved their services. Selbie set out to reshape the MR as a feeder route for goods and passengers into London.
New branches to Uxbridge
, Watford
and Stanmore
were built, and from 1915 the extremely effective Metro-land
advertising campaign began, promoting the lightly developed areas along the MR's routes as ideal for commuting to London. Watkin's expansionist schemes had led to the acquisition of huge tracts of near-worthless land in the Buckinghamshire countryside around the MR's routes, as the MR had tried to take control of as much land as possible along every possible route between London and Manchester. With the GCR complete it was no longer necessary for the MR to keep these lands clear for potential railway use, and Selbie began development on a massive scale. By 1939 over 4,600 houses had been built by the MR alone, and entire new towns had grown around the MR's stations between Harrow and Aylesbury. This development not only generated huge amounts of money from property development, but vastly increased use of the railway for passenger and goods traffic. The MR's Baker Street terminus was also redeveloped and a block of 180 luxury apartments known as Chiltern Court was built above the station. With the profits generated, the line was further electrified as far as Rickmansworth. Again, the Chesham branch was not electrified and remained operated by steam locomotives; the electric locomotives would be decoupled from their trains at Rickmansworth and a steam locomotive would haul the train to Chesham. By this time, the steam sections of the route were generally worked by the powerful Metropolitan Railway H Class
engines, capable of speeds of up to 75 miles per hour (33.5 m/s).
Selbie also made a conscious effort to attract the wealthy classes to the railway. Stations such as Sandy Lodge
(now Moor Park) were built to serve golf course
s and hunts
along the route, and horse-vans were provided at stations serving hunts and point to points. Two Pullman
cars were introduced in 1909 on selected services between the City of London and Chesham, Aylesbury and Verney Junction for the benefit of businessmen travelling to work and theatregoers returning from London.
Despite the huge population growth in southern Buckinghamshire caused by the railway, Chesham remained relatively unaffected by development. Although there was extensive development in Chesham Bois
, roughly halfway between Chesham and Amersham, between 1889 and 1925 the population of Chesham itself grew by less than 2,000, and between 1925 and 1935—the peak of the Metro-land boom—by only 225. Between 1921 and 1928 the season ticket revenue from Amersham and Chalfont & Latimer stations rose by 134%; that from Chesham by only 6.7%. Although the MR owned large tracts of land around Chesham, bought in anticipation of a revival of the LNWR connection scheme, Selbie chose not to build a housing estate on the site, instead selling much of it to the local council. By this time, service on the Chesham branch was of a relatively poor quality. Improvements to the central London section and the prioritisation of the Aylesbury line had led to ageing surplus stock often being used on the Chesham branch, and the partial electrification caused delays at Harrow (and later Rickmansworth) as steam locomotives were coupled and uncoupled. As the branch was mainly operated as a shuttle service passengers to and from Chesham were obliged to wait at Chalfont & Latimer station. This had been built to serve a lightly populated area, but the Metro-land development had caused a much larger number of users than it had been designed for, and it had few waiting facilities, poor lighting, inadequate shelter, and dirty toilets. As Amersham grew, more and more of the trains which had previously run direct from London to Chesham instead ran to Amersham, causing further crowding as passengers waited for the shuttle service at Chalfont & Latimer. Improving road transport caused an increasing number of commuters to abandon the Chesham line, which in turn prompted the MR to further reduce passenger services.
, and a verdict of accidental death was recorded.
, which had merged almost all of Britain's railways into four companies. However, on 17 May 1930 he died suddenly, and his successors acceded to pressure from the Ministry of Transport
to merge with London's other underground railways. On 1 July 1933 the merger brought all of London's underground railways aside from the short Waterloo & City Railway, under public ownership as part of the newly formed London Passenger Transport Board
(LPTB). The Metropolitan Railway became the Metropolitan Line
of the London Underground
.
Frank Pick
, Managing Director of the Underground Group
from 1928 and the Chief Executive of the LPTB, aimed to move the network away from freight services, and to concentrate on the electrification and improvement of the core routes in London. In particular, he saw the lines beyond Aylesbury via Quainton Road
to Brill
and Verney Junction as having little future as financially viable passenger routes. On 30 November 1935 the last train ran on the Brill Tramway
between Brill and Quainton Road, and at the stroke of midnight, the rails connecting the Tramway to the main line were ceremonially severed. The former Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway between Quainton Road and Verney Junction was closed to passengers on 6 July 1936, and London Transport services north of Aylesbury were withdrawn.
locomotives to work the Chesham branch, but other steam services on the former MR were operated by LNER N5 Class
locomotives.
The LNER did not want to take full responsibility for the line, and although they provided the services, ownership remained with the LPTB. In 1935 the LPTB, seeking to abandon steam power as much as possible, drew up a scheme to include electrification of the Amersham line as part of the New Works Programme
. It was not planned to electrify the Chesham branch; instead, a diesel-powered GWR railcar
was borrowed from the GWR for trials on the branch. Although the railcar performed well on the curves and slopes of the branch, the railcar had a capacity for only 70 passengers and was only able to haul light amounts of goods. The LPTB commissioned its own, larger, railcar design, but by the end of 1936, it decided instead to electrify the Chesham branch, and the railcar schemes were abandoned. The LPTB's plan envisaged electric trains splitting at Chalfont & Latimer, with half of each train continuing to Amersham and half to Chesham.
Although some preparatory work was carried out, the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 brought the electrification north of Rickmansworth to a halt. First-class travel was abandoned by the LPTB, along with the Pullman cars, and the line was operated entirely as a shuttle service. In 1940 the Chesham branch was converted to autotrain
working, in which the trains could be driven from each end, thus avoiding the time-consuming repositioning of the locomotive. LNER C13 Class
locomotives were used for this push-pull working, along with two three-car sets of antiquated Ashbury
passenger cars dating from 1898.
. The LPTB became the London Transport Executive
(LT), and the LNER became a part of British Rail
ways. In the Greater London Plan
of 1944 Sir Patrick Abercrombie
had strongly recommended a halt to further modern development in Chesham and along the Chess Valley to preserve the sensitive local environment, and there was thus little prospect for growth in passenger numbers on the branch.
For the first decade after nationalisation services to Chesham continued much as before, although the unification of the mainline companies meant a wider variety of locomotives operating services on the branch. For two weeks from 13 October 1952 LT experimented with a three-car lightweight diesel train on the route, but the train used had difficulty negotiating the line's sharp bends and the branch reverted to steam operations.
By the mid 1950s, British Railways had begun to operate in regional units, and responsibility for services on the former Great Central routes in the Chilterns was transferred to the London Midland Region
. Services on the branch were generally hauled by LMS Ivatt Class
locomotives, although passenger trains continued to use the 1898 Ashbury cars. British Railways continued to operate goods services on the branch, although these declined steadily owing to competition from road haulage to the point at which coal deliveries were the only significant business.
By now the pre-war electrification scheme had been revived. In 1957 electrification between Rickmansworth and Amersham and Chesham began. Chalfont & Latimer's platforms were extended and a second platform was opened at Chesham on 3 July 1960 to prevent through operations to and from Baker Street from interfering with the Chesham–Chalfont & Latimer shuttle. An electric service using London Underground T Stock
began operations between Chesham and Chalfont & Latimer on 16 August 1960, with former MR electric locomotives hauling the through trains to and from London. A steam locomotive was kept on standby in the new second platform at Chesham, in case of a failure of the electric trains. From June 1962 both the T Stock and the locomotive-hauled trains were replaced by the newly introduced London Underground A Stock.
The last scheduled London Transport steam passenger train on the branch left Chesham at 12.11 am on 12 September 1960. 1,917 passengers used the line that day, in comparison with a typical Sunday usage of around 100. Earlier on 11 September descendants of the Chesham residents who had attended Watkin's original meeting to promote the railway, along with 86 year old Albert Wilcox who had been present at the opening of the line, rode the steam shuttle to Chalfont & Latimer and back, and attended a ceremony in Chesham's Council Chamber. (Although the 12.11 am service from Chesham on 12 September 1960 was the last scheduled London Transport steam service to use the line, a steam train left Marylebone for Chesham each morning at 3.55 am to deliver newspapers, returning as the first passenger train from Chesham at 5.58 am. This journey to Marylebone was open to the public but was unadvertised and did not appear in published timetables. This arrangement continued to be operated by steam locomotive until 18 June 1962.) The Ashbury passenger cars, which by now had each covered around 800000 miles (1,287,472 km), were retired from service. The last steam-powered passenger services on the remaining non-electrified section between Amersham and Aylesbury ran on 9 September 1961. The line between Amersham and Aylesbury was handed over to British Rail, leaving Chesham as the westernmost point of the London Underground network. The goods yard at Chesham was closed in 1966, and a train hauled by a former GWR 5700 Class
locomotive removed the track from the goods yard, the last steam service to use the line. On 17 October 1967 the newspaper train service and its return journey to Marylebone, by this time worked by a British Rail diesel multiple unit
, was abandoned, leaving the branch exclusively operated by London Transport trains.
and the Greater London Council
. Sunday services on the branch were abolished as a cost-cutting measure, although this decision was reversed following protests.
In 1982 the future of the Chesham line came into serious question, as it became clear that the two bridges carrying the line into Chesham were deteriorating badly and that, unless the bridges were replaced, the branch could not continue to operate after 1986. By this time rail services in Buckinghamshire had been drastically cut back under the Beeching Axe
mass rail closure programme of the 1960s. The last passenger trains north of Aylesbury had run on 5 September 1966, and since then the future of the Amersham–Aylesbury route itself had been in serious doubt. The Greater London Council was scheduled for abolition, bringing their subsidy of the Chesham branch to an end. Buckinghamshire County Council was unwilling to pay for replacing the bridges, proposing instead that the station be relocated to the original proposed station site of the 1880s on the south side of the bridges. Safety concerns had led to a speed limit of 15 miles per hour (6.7 m/s) over the bridges, and the line appeared certain to be closed.
In 1989 the centenary of the branch saw a revival of interest in the line. Over the weekends of 1–2 and 8–9 July special services were run between Watford and Chesham, using two preserved Metropolitan Railway steam locomotives and a former MR electric locomotive. The service was a great success, with over 9,000 people travelling on the trains and large numbers of people travelling to the area to watch the trains. The success prompted LT to repeat the Steam on the Met event annually until 2000, although often running to Amersham rather than Chesham.
In the early 1990s the number of passengers using the branch stabilised at about 800 people each weekday. As of 2009, the Chesham branch saw 427,000 journeys each year. The proposal to close the Aylesbury–Marylebone route was dropped, and instead the line was upgraded and equipped with fast British Rail Class 165
trains in the early 1990s. These reduced the travel time between Chalfont & Latimer and Marylebone to 33 minutes, increasing usage of the line as a commuter route. The Chesham branch was proposed as a terminus for the original Crossrail
scheme, which would have seen Crossrail trains running from Paddington to serve the stations between Rickmansworth and Aylesbury and the Chesham branch, allowing London Transport to withdraw from Buckinghamshire and cut the Metropolitan line back to serve only the branches to Watford and Uxbridge. The bill proposing the scheme was defeated in Parliament and abandoned in 1995, and the revived scheme authorised by the Crossrail Act 2008
did not include the branches to Aylesbury and Chesham. By this time the little-used Central line
branch from Epping
to Ongar
had closed, with the last services running on 30 September 1994, leaving Chesham—already the westernmost point of the London Underground network since 1961's withdrawal from Aylesbury—as the northernmost point on the London Underground.
By the time London Underground operations were transferred to the newly created Transport for London
(TfL) in 2000, the A Stock trains were already 40 years old. The C Stock trains used on the Circle line, Hammersmith & City line
and sections of the District line
and the D Stock
used on the remainder of the District line were also ageing, and no plans were in place for their replacement. Following lengthy and expensive negotiations, an order was placed in 2003 with Bombardier Transportation
for a fleet of new trains to take over all operations on the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City and District lines.
Branch line
A branch line is a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line...
in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, England. Although no part of it is within London and it runs entirely above ground, it is owned and operated by the London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
. It runs from a junction at Chalfont & Latimer
Chalfont & Latimer station
Chalfont & Latimer station is a London Underground and National Rail station in Travelcard Zone 8 on the Metropolitan Line, in Buckinghamshire. It is the junction between the through service to and a shuttle service every half an hour to...
with the Metropolitan line
Metropolitan Line
The Metropolitan line is part of the London Underground. It is coloured in Transport for London's Corporate Magenta on the Tube map and in other branding. It was the first underground railway in the world, opening as the Metropolitan Railway on 10 January 1863...
and the Chiltern Railways
Chiltern Railways
Chiltern Railways is a British train operating company. It was set up at the privatisation of British Rail in 1996, and operates local passenger trains from Marylebone station in London to Aylesbury and main-line trains on the Chiltern Main Line to Birmingham Snow Hill with its associated branches...
route to Aylesbury
Aylesbury
Aylesbury is the county town of Buckinghamshire in South East England. However the town also falls into a geographical region known as the South Midlands an area that ecompasses the north of the South East, and the southern extremities of the East Midlands...
, and runs for 3.89 miles (6.26 km) northwest to its only other station at Chesham
Chesham tube station
Chesham lies at the end of the Metropolitan Line Chesham branch, and opened on 8 July 1889 as the original northern terminus of the Metropolitan Railway from . The station is a Grade II listed building. There is no station starter signal at Chesham. The branch has no intermediate stations...
. Its terminus at Chesham has since 1961 been the westernmost and since 1994 the northernmost point on the London Underground network.
The line was built as part of Edward Watkin
Edward Watkin
Sir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was an English railway chairman and politician.- Biography :Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.After a private education, he returned to...
's scheme to turn his Metropolitan Railway
Metropolitan railway
Metropolitan Railway can refer to:* Metropolitan line, part of the London Underground* Metropolitan Railway, the first underground railway to be built in London...
(MR) into a direct rail route between London and Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, and it was envisaged that a station outside Chesham would be an intermediate stop on a through route running north to connect with the London and North Western Railway
London and North Western Railway
The London and North Western Railway was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. It was created by the merger of three companies – the Grand Junction Railway, the London and Birmingham Railway and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway...
(LNWR). Deteriorating relations between the MR and LNWR led to the MR instead expanding to the northwest via Aylesbury, and the scheme to connect with the LNWR was abandoned. By this time much of the land needed for the section of line as far as Chesham had been bought. As Chesham was at the time the only significant town near the MR's new route, it was decided to build the route as far as Chesham, and to complete the connection with the LNWR at a future date if it proved desirable. Local residents were unhappy at the proposed station site outside Chesham, and a public subscription raised the necessary additional funds to extend the railway into the centre of the town. The Chesham branch opened in 1889 and Chesham became the terminus of the MR.
While construction of the Chesham line was underway, the Metropolitan Railway was also expanding to the northwest, and in 1892 the extension to Aylesbury and on to Verney Junction
Verney Junction railway station
Verney Junction was a railway station at a junction serving four directions between 1868 and 1968 and from where excursions as far as Ramsgate could be booked...
opened. The Chesham line became a branch line, with most trains operating as a shuttle service connecting to the main line rather than as through trains to London. The opening in 1899 of the Great Central Railway
Great Central Railway
The Great Central Railway was a railway company in England which came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension . On 1 January 1923, it was grouped into the London and North Eastern...
, Edward Watkin's connection between London and Manchester, as well as the highly successful Metro-land
Metro-land
Metro-land is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the 20th century, and were served by the Metropolitan Railway, an independent company until absorbed by the London...
campaign encouraging Londoners to move to the rural areas served by the railway, led to an increase in traffic in the area, although the Chesham branch was less affected by development than most other areas served by the railway. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership and became the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground. London Underground aimed to concentrate on their core business of passenger transport in London, and saw the rural and freight lines in Buckinghamshire as an expensive anomaly. The day-to-day operation of the Chesham branch was transferred to the London and North Eastern Railway
London and North Eastern Railway
The London and North Eastern Railway was the second-largest of the "Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain...
, although London Transport retained control. In 1960 the line was electrified, and from then 1962 on was operated by London Underground A Stock
London Underground A Stock
The A Stock cars were built for the Metropolitan District Railway by Brush Traction in 1903. They were the prototype electric units tested by the Metropolitan District Railway....
trains.
In the 1970s and 1980s decaying infrastructure and the withdrawal of subsidies brought the future of the line into doubt. As one of its last acts the Greater London Council
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council which had covered a much smaller area...
paid for the replacement of two bridges on the line, allowing operations to continue. The centenary of the line in 1989 saw a renewal of interest and an upgrading of the trains between Chalfont & Latimer and London Marylebone station made commuting more practical, and usage of the line stabilised. The introduction of London Underground S Stock
London Underground S Stock
The S Stock is a class of sub-surface train currently being delivered by Bombardier Transportation in Derby to the London Underground to replace 177 existing trains on the Metropolitan, District, Hammersmith & City, and Circle lines, with a new fleet of standardised car design, totalling 191 trains...
in 2010 led to the replacement of the shuttle service with half-hourly through trains to and from London.
Background
The English county of BuckinghamshireBuckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
is bisected by the Chiltern Hills
Chiltern Hills
The Chiltern Hills form a chalk escarpment in South East England. They are known locally as "the Chilterns". A large portion of the hills was designated officially as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1965.-Location:...
, which rise sharply and cross the county from northeast to southwest. Although the fertile soil and good drainage of the Chilterns provides ideal conditions for farming, the steep hills historically made travelling difficult. Few sizeable settlements developed in Buckinghamshire, and what roads existed were of poor quality.
The county town of Aylesbury
Aylesbury
Aylesbury is the county town of Buckinghamshire in South East England. However the town also falls into a geographical region known as the South Midlands an area that ecompasses the north of the South East, and the southern extremities of the East Midlands...
, immediately north of the Chilterns and 37 miles (59.5 km) from the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
, was an important agricultural centre. As London grew, the significance of Buckinghamshire as a provider of food increased, particularly following the development of the Aylesbury duck
Aylesbury duck
The Aylesbury duck is a breed of domesticated duck, bred mainly for its meat and appearance. It is a large duck with pure white plumage, a pink bill, orange legs and feet, an unusually large keel, and a horizontal stance with its body parallel to the ground...
in the 18th century. Large numbers of horses, cattle and Aylesbury ducks were herded along the roads to London's huge livestock market at Smithfield. The strain placed on the roads by bulk livestock movements led to the introduction of a network of high quality toll roads in the area in the 18th century. The roads crossing the Chilterns followed the valley of the River Misbourne
River Misbourne
The River Misbourne rises in a field on the outskirts of Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, and flows down the Misbourne valley to join the River Colne just north of where the latter is crossed by the A40 Western Avenue....
through Amersham
Amersham
Amersham is a market town and civil parish within Chiltern district in Buckinghamshire, England, 27 miles north west of London, in the Chiltern Hills. It is part of the London commuter belt....
or the River Bulbourne
River Bulbourne
The River Bulbourne is a river in Hertfordshire, England. It runs from Dudswell in Northchurch, through Berkhamsted , Bourne End and Boxmoor to where it joins the River Gade at Two Waters in Apsley near Hemel Hempstead. The total length of the river is 11 Km....
through Berkhamsted
Berkhamsted
-Climate:Berkhamsted experiences an oceanic climate similar to almost all of the United Kingdom.-Castle:...
. These roads greatly improved travel in the area, reducing the journey time from Aylesbury to Oxford or London to a single day.
Between 1793 and 1800 the Grand Junction Canal
Grand Junction Canal
The Grand Junction Canal is a canal in England from Braunston in Northamptonshire to the River Thames at Brentford, with a number of branches. The mainline was built between 1793 and 1805, to improve the route from the Midlands to London, by-passing the upper reaches of the River Thames near Oxford...
canal was built, connecting London to the Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
. The canal followed the course of the River Bulbourne through the Chilterns, and included a branch to Aylesbury. For the first time the coal and industrial products of northern England and London could be cheaply supplied to Buckinghamshire, and grain and timber from Buckinghamshire's farms could easily be shipped to market. The route taken by the Grand Junction Canal ran through the east of the county, leaving the Chiltern towns of southern Buckinghamshire isolated. When Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson FRS was an English civil engineer. He was the only son of George Stephenson, the famed locomotive builder and railway engineer; many of the achievements popularly credited to his father were actually the joint efforts of father and son.-Early life :He was born on the 16th of...
's London and Birmingham Railway
London and Birmingham Railway
The London and Birmingham Railway was an early railway company in the United Kingdom from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway ....
opened in 1838 it paralleled the route of the canal through Buckinghamshire. Although the short 1839 Aylesbury Railway linked Aylesbury to the London and Birmingham Railway, the rest of central Buckinghamshire remained unconnected to the railway and canal networks.
Early Chesham railway schemes
The Chiltern market town of CheshamChesham
Chesham is a market town in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire, England. It is located 11 miles south-east of the county town of Aylesbury. Chesham is also a civil parish designated a town council within Chiltern district. It is situated in the Chess Valley and surrounded by farmland, as well as...
had historically been an important manufacturing centre. In 1853 the town held three flour mills, three sawmills, three breweries, two paper mills and a silk mill, while of the town's 6,000 inhabitants 30 were recognised as master manufacturers. However, the local economy suffered badly from a lack of connections to the new transport networks. In the 1840s coal cost almost three times more to buy in Chesham than to buy in Berkhamsted, and it took over 2 hours for passengers to travel by road from Chesham to the most convenient railway station at Watford.
Between 1845, the height of the railway bubble, and the 1880s numerous schemes were put forward for railways to Chesham. The most significant was an 1845 scheme for an orbital railway bypassing London to connect the railways entering London from the north, west and south; this route was to pass through Chesham. The scheme was abandoned, as was an 1853 proposal by railway entrepreneur and former Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Buckingham
Buckingham (UK Parliament constituency)
Buckingham is a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.-Boundaries:...
Harry Verney
Sir Harry Verney, 2nd Baronet
Sir Harry Verney, 2nd Baronet PC, DL, JP was an English soldier and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1832 and 1885.-Background and education:...
for a railway line from Watford to Wendover
Wendover
Wendover is a market town that sits at the foot of the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire, England. It is also a civil parish within Aylesbury Vale district...
via Rickmansworth
Rickmansworth
Rickmansworth is a town in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire, England, 4¼ miles west of Watford.The town has a population of around 15,000 people and lies on the Grand Union Canal and the River Colne, at the northern end of the Colne Valley regional park.Rickmansworth is a small town in...
and Amersham
Amersham
Amersham is a market town and civil parish within Chiltern district in Buckinghamshire, England, 27 miles north west of London, in the Chiltern Hills. It is part of the London commuter belt....
(around two miles (3 km) from Chesham). Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury
Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury
Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury PC , styled Lord Robert Grosvenor from 1831 to 1857, was a British courtier and Whig politician. He served as Comptroller of the Household between 1830 and 1834 and as Treasurer of the Household between 1846 and 1847...
, whose Watford and Rickmansworth Railway
Watford and Rickmansworth Railway
The Watford and Rickmansworth Railway Company was a short-lived company that ran services between Watford and Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, England...
had opened in 1862, proposed extensions from Rickmansworth to Chesham and Aylesbury, but failed to attract funding and abandoned the scheme. To the north of Chesham, the London and North Western Railway
London and North Western Railway
The London and North Western Railway was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. It was created by the merger of three companies – the Grand Junction Railway, the London and Birmingham Railway and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway...
(LNWR) promoted a railway link between the Great Northern Railway
Great Northern Railway (Great Britain)
The Great Northern Railway was a British railway company established by the Great Northern Railway Act of 1846. On 1 January 1923 the company lost its identity as a constituent of the newly formed London and North Eastern Railway....
station at Harpenden
Harpenden railway station
Harpenden railway station serves the town of Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England. It is situated on the Midland Main Line. The station is managed by First Capital Connect and is served by its Thameslink route service....
and the LNWR's station at Boxmoor
Hemel Hempstead railway station
Hemel Hempstead railway station is on the West Coast Main Line, on the western edge of the town of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. The station is 39 km north-west of London Euston on the West Coast Main Line...
, which would run on to terminate at Chesham. The LNWR baulked at the cost of the earthworks necessary to reach Chesham and the southern stage of the proposal was abandoned; the line between Harpenden and Boxmoor
Nicky Line
The Nicky Line is the local nickname for the railway that once linked the English towns of Hemel Hempstead and Harpenden via Redbourn. It was officially known as the Harpenden and Hemel Hempstead Railway...
eventually opened in 1877. (The Harpenden–Boxmoor section was never completed; trains to Boxmoor terminated nearby at Heath Park Halt, and passengers to and from Boxmoor had to complete their journey by horse or horse-drawn bus.) In 1887 a 3' 6" gauge
Cape gauge
Cape gauge is a track gauge of between the inside of the rail heads and is classified as narrow gauge. It has installations of around .The gauge was first used by Norwegian engineer Carl Abraham Pihl and the first line was opened in 1862.- Nomenclature :...
tramway was proposed, which was to run through the streets of Chesham and on to Boxmoor, but the proposal was abandoned owing to a lack of funds and opposition from the operators of toll roads around Boxmoor.
Metropolitan Railway Chiltern schemes
In 1837 Euston railway stationEuston railway station
Euston railway station, also known as London Euston, is a central London railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden. It is the sixth busiest rail terminal in London . It is one of 18 railway stations managed by Network Rail, and is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line...
opened, the first railway station connecting London with the industrial heartlands of the West Midlands and Lancashire. Railways were banned by a Parliamentary commission from operating in London itself, and thus the station was built on what was then the northern boundary of the city. Other main line termini north of London soon followed at Paddington (1838), Bishopsgate
Bishopsgate railway station
Bishopsgate station was a railway station located on the eastern side of Shoreditch High Street in the modern London Borough of Tower Hamlets; the western edge of the East End. It was in use from 1840 to 1964 when it was destroyed by fire...
(1840), Fenchurch Street
Fenchurch Street railway station
Fenchurch Street railway station, also known as London Fenchurch Street, is a central London railway terminus in the south eastern corner of the City of London, England. The station is one of the smallest terminals in London in terms of platforms and one of the most intensively operated...
(1841), King's Cross (1852) and St Pancras
St Pancras railway station
St Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture. The Grade I listed building stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London Borough of Camden, between the...
(1868). All were built outside the built-up area of the city, making them inconvenient to reach. Charles Pearson
Charles Pearson
Charles Pearson was Solicitor to the City of London, a reforming campaigner, and – briefly – Member of Parliament for Lambeth...
(1793–1862) had proposed the idea of an underground railway connecting the City of London with the relatively distant London main line rail termini in around 1840. In 1854 to promote the scheme he commissioned the first ever traffic survey, determining that each day 200,000 walked into the City of London, 44,000 travelled by omnibus, and 26,000 travelled in private carriages. A Parliamentary Commission backed Pearson's proposal over other schemes.
Despite concerns about vibrations causing subsidence of nearby buildings, the problems of compensating the many thousands of people whose homes were destroyed during the digging of the tunnel, and fears that the tunnelling might accidentally break through into Hell, construction began in 1860. The new railway was built beneath the existing New Road
New Road (London)
The New Road was a turnpike road built across fields around the northern boundaries of London, the first part of which opened in 1756. The route comprises the following modern-day roads: Old Marylebone Road, Marylebone Road, Euston Road, Pentonville Road, City Road, and Moorgate.-Early history:In...
, running from the Great Western Railway
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...
's terminus at Paddington to Farringdon and the meat market of Smithfield. On 9 January 1863 the line opened as the Metropolitan Railway
Metropolitan railway
Metropolitan Railway can refer to:* Metropolitan line, part of the London Underground* Metropolitan Railway, the first underground railway to be built in London...
(MR), the world's first underground passenger railway. The MR was successful and grew steadily, extending its own services and acquiring other local railways in the areas north and west of London.
In 1872 Edward Watkin
Edward Watkin
Sir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was an English railway chairman and politician.- Biography :Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.After a private education, he returned to...
(1819–1901) was appointed as the Metropolitan Railway's Chairman. A director of many railway companies, he had a vision of unifying a string of railway companies to create a single route running from Manchester via London to an intended Channel Tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...
and on to France. In 1873 Watkin entered negotiations to take control of the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway
Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway
The Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway was an English railway located in Buckinghamshire, England operating between Aylesbury and Verney Junction.-History:...
and a section of the former Buckinghamshire Railway
Buckinghamshire Railway
The Buckinghamshire Railway was a railway company in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, England that constructed railway lines connecting Bletchley, Banbury and Oxford...
running north from Verney Junction
Verney Junction railway station
Verney Junction was a railway station at a junction serving four directions between 1868 and 1968 and from where excursions as far as Ramsgate could be booked...
to Buckingham. He planned to extend the MR north from London to Aylesbury to join the existing lines and create a direct route from London to the north of England. He also proposed to extend a short rail branch which ran from the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway to the small town of Brill
Brill
Brill is a village and civil parish in Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England, close to the boundary with Oxfordshire. It is about north-west of Long Crendon and south-east of Bicester...
, known as the Brill Tramway
Brill Tramway
The Brill Tramway, also known as the Quainton Tramway, Wotton Tramway, Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad and Metropolitan Railway Brill Branch, was a six-mile rail line in the Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, England...
, southwest to Oxford, and thus create a through route from London to Oxford. Rail services between Oxford and London at this time were poor, and although still an extremely roundabout route, had the scheme been completed it would have formed the shortest route from London to Oxford, Aylesbury, Buckingham and Stratford upon Avon. The Duke of Buckingham, chairman of the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and owner of the Brill Tramway, was enthusiastic, and authorisation for the scheme was sought from Parliament. Parliament did not share the enthusiasm of Watkin and the Duke, and in 1875 the Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire Union Railway Bill was rejected.
Watkin did, however, obtain consent to extend the MR to Harrow
Harrow, London
Harrow is an area in the London Borough of Harrow, northwest London, United Kingdom. It is a suburban area and is situated 12.2 miles northwest of Charing Cross...
, roughly 12 miles (19.3 km) northwest of London, an extension which opened in 1880. The Harrow line was further extended to Rickmansworth in 1887. Rickmansworth at this time was a small town with a population of only 1,800; to generate passenger traffic for the new station, a horse bus service between Chesham and Rickmansworth opened on 1 September 1887.
1885 LNWR junction scheme
Watkin continued to harbour ambitions of linking his railway companies in the north and south of England, and while the construction of the Rickmansworth extension was underway planned two possible routes north from Rickmansworth across the Chilterns. One proposal envisaged the MR taking over or reaching agreement with the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, building a link between Rickmansworth and Aylesbury, and running over the A&B's line to the north. The A&B had close relations with the Great Western Railway, with whom they shared a station at Aylesbury. Watkin felt it possible that the A&B would reach agreement with the GWR instead and not cooperate with the MR.In anticipation of the A&B refusing to cooperate, a tentative agreement was reached with the London and North Western Railway, with whom Watkin was on good terms, for the MR to build a route via Chesham to connect to LNWR mainline. This scheme would provide the LNWR with an alternative route into London when necessary, while providing Watkin with his long-sought connection to the north. The land required for an intermediate station near Chalfont St Giles
Chalfont St Giles
Chalfont St Giles is a village and civil parish within Chiltern district in south east Buckinghamshire, England, on the edge of the Chilterns, 25 miles from London, and near Seer Green, Jordans, Chalfont St Peter, Little Chalfont and Amersham....
and a line between there and a site outside Chesham was purchased. Agreement was reached with the LNWR that the costs of building the line would be shared equally by the MR and LNWR in return for the LNWR having running rights to Rickmansworth, and an Act of Parliament authorising the extension was obtained in 1885.
After the Act of Parliament had been granted, membership of the board of the LNWR changed, and they abandoned their support for the extension. By this time, the MR had bought most of the land between Rickmansworth and Chesham required for that section of the route.
1888 Aylesbury extension scheme
With relations between the MR and the LNWR deteriorating, Watkin turned his attention to the proposal to link to Aylesbury. Negotiations between the A&B and the GWR had broken down, and Watkin seized an opportunity to agree running rights over the A&B's route north from Aylesbury, taking over the line completely in 1891. In 1888 work began on the extension to Aylesbury.While the route to the LNWR via Chesham had been abandoned, much of the land needed for the section south of Chesham had already been bought. As Chesham, with a population in 1882 of 6,500, was the most significant town in the area through which the MR was building, the MR decided to build the section of line between Chalfont and Chesham as a branch line
Branch line
A branch line is a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line...
despite Chesham no longer being on the proposed through route to the north. The planned route to the LNWR would have passed to the east of Chesham, and the proposed site of the station was in Millfields, southwest of the town. (Although the extension to the LNWR was abandoned, the MR continued to buy land between Chesham and Tring
Tring
Tring is a small market town and also a civil parish in the Chiltern Hills in Hertfordshire, England. Situated north-west of London and linked to London by the old Roman road of Akeman Street, by the modern A41, by the Grand Union Canal and by rail lines to Euston Station, Tring is now largely a...
for some years afterwards, in anticipation of the scheme being revived.)
Although work had begun on the Millfields station, including the completion of the station hotel (now the Unicorn pub), the population of Chesham were unhappy at the station being built such a distance from the town. With the extension to meet the LNWR abandoned the railway no longer needed to curve away from the town, and a public subscription raised £2,000 fund a 71-chain (1,562-yd; 1,428 m) extension to a site near the town centre. Construction of the branch to Chesham began in late 1887.
Construction and opening
The extensions from Rickmansworth to Aylesbury and Chesham were designed by Charles Liddell and built by contractor James Firbank. Rather than follow the valley of the River ChessRiver Chess
The River Chess is a chalk stream which springs from Chesham, Buckinghamshire and runs through Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, in south-eastern England. The Chess, along with the Colne and Gade, gives rise to the name of the district of Three Rivers, in which it forms its confluence with the...
, which would have been the most convenient route to Chesham, the route out of Rickmansworth was intentionally built on higher ground to reduce the steep climb over the Chilterns towards Aylesbury, and thus rose steadily from Rickmansworth to a hilltop station at Amersham. At Chalfont Road station
Chalfont & Latimer station
Chalfont & Latimer station is a London Underground and National Rail station in Travelcard Zone 8 on the Metropolitan Line, in Buckinghamshire. It is the junction between the through service to and a shuttle service every half an hour to...
(renamed Chalfont & Latimer in 1915), near Chalfont St Giles, the line to Chesham split from the line to Aylesbury. With a total length of 3 miles 56 chains (3 mi 1,232 yd; 5,955 m), the single-track Chesham branch ran alongside the Aylesbury line for a short distance, before curving down the slope of the Chess Valley at a gradient of around 1 in 66. Chalk from the railway's cutting
Cut (earthmoving)
In civil engineering, a cut or cutting is where soil or rock material from a hill or mountain is cut out to make way for a canal, road or railway line....
along the Chess Valley was used to build an embankment to bring the railway into the town centre. Bridging the watercress beds of the Chess Valley proved problematic, and the cost of the line exceeded its estimate. Additional costs were incurred by the laying of temporary track in early 1889 to allow the directors of the MR a trial trip along the route.
On 15 May 1889 a demonstration train comprising two carriages and two locomotives ran along the newly completed line from Chesham to Rickmansworth, carrying the subscribers who had funded the extension and representatives of the local authorities and School Boards covering the areas through which the new line ran. (As no Metropolitan Railway train had yet run through to Chesham on the finished line, the train from Chesham to Rickmansworth was drawn by two locomotives belonging to the contractors who had built the line, rather than by MR engines. A third engine ran ahead of the demonstration train to act as a pilot.) A second train carried the directors of the Metropolitan Railway from London to Rickmansworth, collected those passengers who had ridden the demonstration train from Chesham to Rickmansworth, and continued to Chesham.
As the line had not yet formally been approved for opening by the Railway Inspectorate, the MR requested that the local authorities not celebrate the event. However, public interest was high and schools closed for the day. Large crowds gathered around the station and along the line, and a banner reading "Long looked for, come at last" was hung across Chesham station. As the train pulled into Chesham, it was greeted by celebratory gunfire as it drew into the town, and a band at the station played See the Conquering Hero Comes. The party alighted at the newly built Chesham goods depot, which had been decorated as a banqueting hall for the occasion, and an opening ceremony was conducted outside by Edward Watkin and local dignitary and railway financier Ferdinand de Rothschild before the group entered the goods depot for a celebratory meal. Watkin gave a speech recollecting George Stephenson
George Stephenson
George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives...
's desire, fifty years earlier, to see the first mainline railway built along the route now being taken by the Metropolitan Railway, joked that he hoped the easy access to London would not lead to the rural nature of the area being displaced by "a sudden influx of cockneys", and spoke of his desire to see the connection northwards to the LNWR completed.
The line was formally inspected by the Railway Inspectorate on 1 July 1889, and the first official service on the line left Chesham for London's Baker Street at 6.55 am on 8 July 1889. Throughout the day large crowds flocked to Chesham station to watch the trains, and the arrival and departure of each train at Chesham was greeted with peal
Peal
A peal is the name given to a specific type of performance of change ringing. The precise definition of a peal has changed considerably over the years...
s of the bells of St. Mary's Church
St. Mary's Church, Chesham
St. Mary's Church is a Grade A listed Anglican church in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, and is part of the Diocese of Oxford. Built on the site of a Bronze Age stone circle of puddingstones, parts of the church building date to the 12th century. Remodelled in the 15th and 17th centuries, the church is...
. Over the course of the day 1,500 passengers travelled on the line, and 4,300 used the line in its first week of operations.
Following the opening of the line, 17 trains per weekday ran in each direction at intervals of one hour from around 7 am to around 11 pm. The initial trains were drawn by Metropolitan Railway A and B Class
Metropolitan Railway A Class
The Metropolitan Railway A Class were 4-4-0T steam locomotives built to work the first of the London Underground lines. They were built by Beyer, Peacock and Company from 1864....
locomotives. Most trains stopped at all stations, but a fast trains each morning ran between Chesham and Baker Street, taking 50 minutes from start to finish. On Sundays, trains again ran at hourly intervals, but only 12 trains per day ran and there was a three-hour gap in services in the morning to allow the railway's staff to attend church.
The opening of the railway dramatically ended Chesham's isolation. Commuting to London became possible for the first time, as did affordable excursions to the seaside resort
Seaside resort
A seaside resort is a resort, or resort town, located on the coast. Where a beach is the primary focus for tourists, it may be called a beach resort.- Overview :...
s on the south and east coasts. The products of the area's industries and farms could for the first time be shipped cheaply to the markets of London, and London newspapers arrived each morning at 7.28 am, in time for delivery.
Stations
The station at Chalfont Road was built with almost all facilities on the up side (the London-bound platform). As Chalfont St Giles, the largest nearby settlement, was on the other side of the tracks, most passengers travelling to and from the station were obliged to take a lengthy detour from the single exit. A footpath across the tracks was added in 1925, but an approach road giving access to the station from the southern side of the railway line was not built until 1933. The station had three platforms; one platform in each direction on the London–Aylesbury line, and a bay platformBay platform
Bay platform is a railway-related term commonly used in the UK and Australia to describe a dead-end platform at a railway station that has through lines...
alongside the up platform for trains to Chesham. A run-around loop was built to allow locomotives reversing in the bay platform always to be at the front of their trains. It was built outside the station, meaning locomotives reversing on the Chesham line were obliged to push their trains out of the station before performing the manoeuvre.
The station was renamed "Chalfont & Latimer" in 1915, although station signage was inconsistent and on absorption by London Transport in 1933 its roundel
Roundel
A roundel in heraldry is a disc; the term is also commonly used to refer to a type of national insignia used on military aircraft, generally circular in shape and usually comprising concentric rings of different colours.-Heraldry:...
signs read simply "Chalfont". Increased passenger numbers strained the station's minimal facilities, and it was eventually redeveloped with extended shelters and improved waiting rooms in 1927. The platforms were extended during the electrification works of 1957–60.
The Metropolitan Railway Act 1885 had given Watkin permission to extend the line from Chesham to connect with the LNWR at Tring. Thus, although it was the terminus of the line, Chesham station
Chesham tube station
Chesham lies at the end of the Metropolitan Line Chesham branch, and opened on 8 July 1889 as the original northern terminus of the Metropolitan Railway from . The station is a Grade II listed building. There is no station starter signal at Chesham. The branch has no intermediate stations...
was designed with a revival of the LNWR extension scheme in mind. The small station building was set to one side of the tracks to allow for a possible extension onwards. The station had a single platform, with a run-around loop and turntable alongside, together with a coaling station and water tank. The station was lit by gas light until 1925; the local gas works, which consumed around 5,000 tons of coal each year, threatened to withdraw their coal traffic from the line if the station were fitted with electric lighting. While Chalfont Road station initially served a sparsely populated rural area (the village of Little Chalfont
Little Chalfont
Little Chalfont is a village and civil parish in Chiltern district in south east Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated in a small group of villages called The Chalfonts which also consists of Chalfont St Giles and Chalfont St Peter...
had not yet grown around the station), Chesham station was busy, and at the time of its opening had a full staff of a stationmaster, two ticket inspectors, two clerks, two porters
Porter (railroad)
A porter is a railway employee assigned to assist passengers aboard a passenger train or to handle their baggage; it may be used particularly to refer to employees assigned to assisting passengers in the sleeping cars....
and two collectors.
Chesham also had extensive goods facilities, particularly for coal; the goods yard was initially equipped with a mobile 5-ton
Long ton
Long ton is the name for the unit called the "ton" in the avoirdupois or Imperial system of measurements, as used in the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries. It has been mostly replaced by the tonne, and in the United States by the short ton...
crane, replaced by a fixed 8-ton crane between 1898–1900. The outward transport of watercress
Watercress
Watercresses are fast-growing, aquatic or semi-aquatic, perennial plants native from Europe to central Asia, and one of the oldest known leaf vegetables consumed by human beings...
, a major local industry, also generated significant traffic. During the electrification of the line in 1957–60 the station was equipped with a bay platform for passenger trains, to allow it to accommodate both through services to and from Baker Street and the Chalfont & Latimer–Chesham shuttle simultaneously. This bay platform was closed on 29 November 1970 and is now a garden.
The Metropolitan Railway's passenger coaches, dating from 1870 and designed for underground use within London, were not fitted with heating until 1895. Consequently, both stations were also equipped with equipment for heating footwarmers, which would be distributed to passengers during cold weather.
Opening of the Aylesbury line
As developments on the line from Chalfont Road to Chesham took place, progress continued on the 16 miles (25.7 km) cross-Chiltern link between Chalfont and Aylesbury. On 1 September 1892 work was completed as far as a temporary station south of Aylesbury. (The connection with the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway—absorbed by the Metropolitan Railway in 1891—was completed in late 1893. From 1 January 1894 MR trains used the A&BR's Aylesbury stationAylesbury railway station
Aylesbury railway station is a railway station in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England and is a major stop on the London to Aylesbury Line from Marylebone station via Amersham. It is 37.75 miles from Aylesbury Station to Marylebone Station...
, and the temporary station was abandoned.) The line to Chesham became a branch line, generally operated by a shuttle service between Chalfont Road and Chesham, although some trains at peak periods continued to run between London and Chesham. The MR had bought a number of Metropolitan Railway C Class
Metropolitan Railway C Class
The Metropolitan Railway C class was a group of four 0-4-4T tank engines built in 1891 by Neilson and Company....
locomotives to replace the ageing A and B class engines, but these performed poorly on the London-Aylesbury line and were soon replaced by the Metropolitan Railway D Class
Metropolitan Railway D Class
The Metropolitan Railway D Class was a group of six 2-4-0T tank engines built in 1895 by Sharp, Stewart and Company.- External links :* http://www.railwayarchive.org.uk/stories/getobjectstory.php?rnum=L2597&enum=LE130&pnum=13&maxp=18...
. As a consequence, the C class engines were often used on the Chesham shuttle services.
While construction of the Chesham and Aylesbury lines was underway Watkin continued to press for the extension from Chesham to the LNWR, as did prominent manufacturers in Chesham. However, construction of the extensions had left the MR seriously exposed financially, forcing the board to cut dividends in July 1889. At a Special General Meeting on 12 February 1890 matters came to a head. Shareholders endorsed the decision to acquire the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway and authorised the MR to acquire the moribund Brill Tramway, which connected with the A&BR at Quainton Road station
Quainton Road railway station
Quainton Road railway station was opened in 1868 in undeveloped countryside near Quainton, Buckinghamshire, from London. Built by the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, it was the result of pressure from the 3rd Duke of Buckingham to route the railway near his home at Wotton House and to open a...
, but blocked the expensive extension beyond Chesham, as well as Watkin's proposed extension to Moreton Pinkney
Moreton Pinkney
Moreton Pinkney is a village and civil parish in South Northamptonshire, about north of Brackley.-Parish church:The earliest evidence of Christianity in the parish is a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon stone cross in the churchyard of the Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin...
to the north. (Watkin's Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway was formed by amalgamation in 1847. The MS&LR changed its name to the Great Central Railway in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension.-Origin:...
was refused consent at the time to build south to connect with the MR at Moreton Pinkney, which would have rendered the Moreton Pinkney branch an inevitably loss-making branch line serving a very lightly populated area. Watkin was determined to build this section as a vital segment in his vision of a London–Manchester railway, and proposed that if the MR would not build this section, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway would build the line themselves and lease it to the MR. The MR board refused to have anything to do with the scheme. Moreton Pinkney was eventually served by Watkin's railway network in 1899 as Culworth railway station
Culworth railway station
Culworth was a railway station near the village of Moreton Pinkney in Northamptonshire. The station was on the former Great Central main line, the last main line to be constructed from the north of England to London which opened in March 1899.- History :...
on the Great Central Railway
Great Central Railway
The Great Central Railway was a railway company in England which came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension . On 1 January 1923, it was grouped into the London and North Eastern...
.)
In 1894 Edward Watkin suffered a stroke. Although he nominally remained a director of his railway companies, he resigned all his railway chairmanships and his influence was effectively ended. With the connection at Aylesbury complete, the Metropolitan Railway reached 50 miles (80.5 km) northwest of London, and his planned route between London and northern England was almost complete. Watkin's Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway was formed by amalgamation in 1847. The MS&LR changed its name to the Great Central Railway in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension.-Origin:...
continued to build southwards from its southernmost point at Annesley
Annesley railway station
Annesley railway station was a station in Annesley, Nottinghamshire. It was opened in 1874, to serve the town which had grown following the opening of Annesley colliery in 1865. It was closed in 1953 as part of the post-war cutback, and the line closed to passengers in 1964...
, reaching Quainton Road station on the former A&BR in 1899 and completing the north-south link, the Great Central Railway
Great Central Railway
The Great Central Railway was a railway company in England which came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension . On 1 January 1923, it was grouped into the London and North Eastern...
(GCR), in time for Watkin to see his vision completed before his death in 1901.
Relations with the Great Central Railway
After Watkin's retirement from management, relations between the MR and GCR deteriorated rapidly over shared use of Baker Street station and the congested route into London, and soon broke down completely. On 30 July 1898 John Bell, General Manager of the Metropolitan Railway, took control of the Quainton Road signal box himself and refused to allow a GCR train onto MR-owned tracks on the grounds that it was scheduled to take the Great Western rather than the Metropolitan route south of Aylesbury, while on one occasion in 1901 King Edward VIIEdward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
was travelling home after visiting a friend in Wendover; the MR signalman allowed a slow goods train to run in front of the royal train, causing the King to arrive late back in London. The MR management also refused the GCR permission to install points to connect their engine shed at Aylesbury to the railway line, on the grounds that the land for the shed had been bought clandestinely. Eventually a parallel set of tracks was built for the GCR between Harrow and London, running alongside the MR to a separate terminus at Marylebone, a short distance from Baker Street. The GCR continued to share the less-congested section between Quainton Road and Harrow—including Chalfont Road station—with the MR.
With the hostile Metropolitan Railway controlling the GCR's only approach to London through Quainton Road and Aylesbury, GCR General Manager William Pollitt
William Pollitt
Colonel Sir William Pollitt was general manager of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway from 1886 to 1902, the final three years being as General Manager of the renamed Great Central Railway....
decided to create a link with the Great Western Railway to create a second route into London which bypassed all MR property. In 1899 the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
The Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway was a joint venture supported by the Great Western Railway and Great Central Railway and run by the Great Western and Great Central Joint Committee. The original arrangement was agreed between the two companies in September 1898...
began construction of a new line, commonly known as the Alternative Route, to link the GWR's existing station at Princes Risborough to the new Great Central line. The line ran from Princes Risborough north to meet the Great Central at Grendon Underwood
Grendon Underwood
Grendon Underwood is a village and civil parish in Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the west of the county, close to the boundary with Oxfordshire and near the Roman road Akeman Street....
, about three miles (5 km) north of Quainton Road, thus bypassing Quainton Road altogether. Although formally an independent company, in practice the new line was operated as a part of the Great Central Railway. The new route opened in 1906, and a substantial part of the GCR's traffic to and from London was diverted onto the Alternative Route, damaging the profitability of the MR's railway operations.
The MR management were horrified at the potential loss of income and restarted negotiations with the GCR, and a 1906 agreement meant that GCR traffic was shared between the old and new routes. Management of the shared route north of Harrow alternated every five years between the MR and GCR. (A proposed link between Marylebone and the sub-surface section of the Metropolitan Railway, which would have allowed GCR trains to run across London via the MR-controlled Thames Tunnel and on to the south coast, was abandoned.) The sharing arrangement meant through trains running from Chesham to Marylebone, as well as the MR terminus at Baker Street, and that the branch was worked by GCR trains as well as the ageing MR rolling stock.
Chesham and Metro-land
In 1903 Robert Selbie was appointed Secretary of the Metropolitan Railway, working on the electrification of the London sections of the line; by 1905 the route was electrified as far as Harrow, although the sections north of Harrow, including the Chesham branch, continued to be worked by steam power. In 1908 he was appointed General Manager, a position he was to hold until 1930. Selbie realised that Watkin's schemes and the expensive electrification project had left the company with major financial liabilities, and that the MR's core business in central London would come under significant pressure as the use of automobiles increased and as the new Underground Electric Railways of LondonUnderground Electric Railways Company of London
The Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited , known operationally as The Underground for much of its existence, was established in 1902. It was the holding company for the three deep-level "tube"A "tube" railway is an underground railway constructed in a circular tunnel by the use...
tube lines improved their services. Selbie set out to reshape the MR as a feeder route for goods and passengers into London.
New branches to Uxbridge
Uxbridge
Uxbridge is a large town located in north west London, England and is the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Hillingdon. It forms part of the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is located west-northwest of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres...
, Watford
Watford
Watford is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, situated northwest of central London and within the bounds of the M25 motorway. The borough is separated from Greater London to the south by the urbanised parish of Watford Rural in the Three Rivers District.Watford was created as an urban...
and Stanmore
Stanmore
Stanmore is a suburban area of the London Borough of Harrow, in northwest London. It is situated northwest of Charing Cross. The area is home to Stanmore Hill, one of the highest points of London, high.-Toponymy:...
were built, and from 1915 the extremely effective Metro-land
Metro-land
Metro-land is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the 20th century, and were served by the Metropolitan Railway, an independent company until absorbed by the London...
advertising campaign began, promoting the lightly developed areas along the MR's routes as ideal for commuting to London. Watkin's expansionist schemes had led to the acquisition of huge tracts of near-worthless land in the Buckinghamshire countryside around the MR's routes, as the MR had tried to take control of as much land as possible along every possible route between London and Manchester. With the GCR complete it was no longer necessary for the MR to keep these lands clear for potential railway use, and Selbie began development on a massive scale. By 1939 over 4,600 houses had been built by the MR alone, and entire new towns had grown around the MR's stations between Harrow and Aylesbury. This development not only generated huge amounts of money from property development, but vastly increased use of the railway for passenger and goods traffic. The MR's Baker Street terminus was also redeveloped and a block of 180 luxury apartments known as Chiltern Court was built above the station. With the profits generated, the line was further electrified as far as Rickmansworth. Again, the Chesham branch was not electrified and remained operated by steam locomotives; the electric locomotives would be decoupled from their trains at Rickmansworth and a steam locomotive would haul the train to Chesham. By this time, the steam sections of the route were generally worked by the powerful Metropolitan Railway H Class
Metropolitan Railway H Class
The Metropolitan Railway H class consisted of eight 4-4-4T steam locomotives, numbered 103 to 110. They were built by Kerr, Stuart & Co of Stoke on Trent in 1920 at a cost of £11,575 each....
engines, capable of speeds of up to 75 miles per hour (33.5 m/s).
Selbie also made a conscious effort to attract the wealthy classes to the railway. Stations such as Sandy Lodge
Moor Park tube station
Moor Park is a London Underground station in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire. The station is outside the Greater London boundary but is in both Zone 6 and Zone 7....
(now Moor Park) were built to serve golf course
Golf course
A golf course comprises a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, fairway, rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick and cup, all designed for the game of golf. A standard round of golf consists of playing 18 holes, thus most golf courses have this number of holes...
s and hunts
Fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...
along the route, and horse-vans were provided at stations serving hunts and point to points. Two Pullman
Pullman (car or coach)
In the United States, Pullman was used to refer to railroad sleeping cars which were built and operated on most U.S. railroads by the Pullman Company from 1867 to December 31, 1968....
cars were introduced in 1909 on selected services between the City of London and Chesham, Aylesbury and Verney Junction for the benefit of businessmen travelling to work and theatregoers returning from London.
Despite the huge population growth in southern Buckinghamshire caused by the railway, Chesham remained relatively unaffected by development. Although there was extensive development in Chesham Bois
Chesham Bois
Chesham Bois is a village in Buckinghamshire, England, adjacent to both Amersham and Chesham.-History:...
, roughly halfway between Chesham and Amersham, between 1889 and 1925 the population of Chesham itself grew by less than 2,000, and between 1925 and 1935—the peak of the Metro-land boom—by only 225. Between 1921 and 1928 the season ticket revenue from Amersham and Chalfont & Latimer stations rose by 134%; that from Chesham by only 6.7%. Although the MR owned large tracts of land around Chesham, bought in anticipation of a revival of the LNWR connection scheme, Selbie chose not to build a housing estate on the site, instead selling much of it to the local council. By this time, service on the Chesham branch was of a relatively poor quality. Improvements to the central London section and the prioritisation of the Aylesbury line had led to ageing surplus stock often being used on the Chesham branch, and the partial electrification caused delays at Harrow (and later Rickmansworth) as steam locomotives were coupled and uncoupled. As the branch was mainly operated as a shuttle service passengers to and from Chesham were obliged to wait at Chalfont & Latimer station. This had been built to serve a lightly populated area, but the Metro-land development had caused a much larger number of users than it had been designed for, and it had few waiting facilities, poor lighting, inadequate shelter, and dirty toilets. As Amersham grew, more and more of the trains which had previously run direct from London to Chesham instead ran to Amersham, causing further crowding as passengers waited for the shuttle service at Chalfont & Latimer. Improving road transport caused an increasing number of commuters to abandon the Chesham line, which in turn prompted the MR to further reduce passenger services.
1909 accidents
Although the short line to Chesham generally had a good safety record, despite its sharp curves and relatively steep gradient, it suffered two significant accidents in this period. On 19 August 1909 the A class engine hauling the 7.53 am train from Chesham broke an axle and derailed outside Chesham. There were no injuries but the track was blocked; a passenger service was maintained by operating shuttle services from each end of the branch to the crash site, where passengers were obliged to walk around the derailed engine to change trains. On 6 November 1909 a backdraught from a locomotive firebox enveloped Robert Prior, the train's driver, in flames. (The type of locomotive is not recorded, but it is likely to have been a Metropolitan Railway D Class, which are known to have had a problem with backdraughts.) The locomotive's fireman managed to drive the train to Chesham, where Prior died from his injuries two days later. An inquest found that Prior had failed to turn on the blowerBlastpipe
The blastpipe is part of the exhaust system of a steam locomotive that discharges exhaust steam from the cylinders into the smokebox beneath the chimney in order to increase the draught through the fire.- History :...
, and a verdict of accidental death was recorded.
London Transport
Robert Selbie had fought vigorously for the independence of the Metropolitan Railway, and had successfully preserved the MR's independence during the grouping of 1923Railways Act 1921
The Railways Act 1921, also known as the Grouping Act, was an enactment by the British government of David Lloyd George intended to stem the losses being made by many of the country's 120 railway companies, move the railways away from internal competition, and to retain some of the benefits which...
, which had merged almost all of Britain's railways into four companies. However, on 17 May 1930 he died suddenly, and his successors acceded to pressure from the Ministry of Transport
Department for Transport
In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved...
to merge with London's other underground railways. On 1 July 1933 the merger brought all of London's underground railways aside from the short Waterloo & City Railway, under public ownership as part of the newly formed London Passenger Transport Board
London Passenger Transport Board
The London Passenger Transport Board was the organisation responsible for public transport in London, UK, and its environs from 1933 to 1948...
(LPTB). The Metropolitan Railway became the Metropolitan Line
Metropolitan Line
The Metropolitan line is part of the London Underground. It is coloured in Transport for London's Corporate Magenta on the Tube map and in other branding. It was the first underground railway in the world, opening as the Metropolitan Railway on 10 January 1863...
of the London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
.
Frank Pick
Frank Pick
Frank Pick LLB Hon. RIBA was a British transport administrator. After qualifying as a solicitor in 1902, he worked at the North Eastern Railway, before moving to the Underground Electric Railways Company of London in 1906...
, Managing Director of the Underground Group
Underground Electric Railways Company of London
The Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited , known operationally as The Underground for much of its existence, was established in 1902. It was the holding company for the three deep-level "tube"A "tube" railway is an underground railway constructed in a circular tunnel by the use...
from 1928 and the Chief Executive of the LPTB, aimed to move the network away from freight services, and to concentrate on the electrification and improvement of the core routes in London. In particular, he saw the lines beyond Aylesbury via Quainton Road
Quainton Road railway station
Quainton Road railway station was opened in 1868 in undeveloped countryside near Quainton, Buckinghamshire, from London. Built by the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, it was the result of pressure from the 3rd Duke of Buckingham to route the railway near his home at Wotton House and to open a...
to Brill
Brill railway station
Brill railway station was the terminus of a small railway line in Buckinghamshire, England, known as the Brill Tramway. Built and owned by the Duke of Buckingham, it was later operated by London's Metropolitan Railway, and in 1933 briefly became one of the two north-western termini of the London...
and Verney Junction as having little future as financially viable passenger routes. On 30 November 1935 the last train ran on the Brill Tramway
Brill Tramway
The Brill Tramway, also known as the Quainton Tramway, Wotton Tramway, Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad and Metropolitan Railway Brill Branch, was a six-mile rail line in the Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, England...
between Brill and Quainton Road, and at the stroke of midnight, the rails connecting the Tramway to the main line were ceremonially severed. The former Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway between Quainton Road and Verney Junction was closed to passengers on 6 July 1936, and London Transport services north of Aylesbury were withdrawn.
London and North Eastern Railway operation
The route to Aylesbury and the Chesham branch survived Pick's cutbacks to the Metropolitan Line, but the former Metropolitan Railway's routes in Buckinghamshire, and in particular the Chesham line, were increasingly regarded as an expensive anomaly by London Transport. After 1937 the operation of all steam services north of Rickmansworth was passed to the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER). The LNER retained Metropolitan Railway E ClassMetropolitan Railway E Class
The Metropolitan Railway E Class is a class of 0-4-4T steam locomotives.A total of seven locomotives were built between 1896 and 1901 for the Metropolitan Railway: three by themselves at their Neasden Works and four by Hawthorn Leslie in Newcastle. One locomotive became Metropolitan Railway No.1...
locomotives to work the Chesham branch, but other steam services on the former MR were operated by LNER N5 Class
GCR Class 9F
The Great Central Railway Class 9F was a class of 0-6-2T steam locomotive built between 1891 and 1901. From 1923 the locomotives were redesignated Class N5.-Design and construction:...
locomotives.
The LNER did not want to take full responsibility for the line, and although they provided the services, ownership remained with the LPTB. In 1935 the LPTB, seeking to abandon steam power as much as possible, drew up a scheme to include electrification of the Amersham line as part of the New Works Programme
New Works Programme
The "New Works Programme, 1935 - 1940" was the major investment programme delivered by the London Passenger Transport Board , commonly known as London Transport, which had been created in 1933 to coordinate underground train, tram, trolleybus and bus services in the capital and the surrounding areas...
. It was not planned to electrify the Chesham branch; instead, a diesel-powered GWR railcar
GWR railcars
In 1933, the Great Western Railway introduced the first of what was to become a very successful series of railcars, which survived in regular use into the 1960s, when they were replaced with the new British Rail "first generation" type diesel multiple units....
was borrowed from the GWR for trials on the branch. Although the railcar performed well on the curves and slopes of the branch, the railcar had a capacity for only 70 passengers and was only able to haul light amounts of goods. The LPTB commissioned its own, larger, railcar design, but by the end of 1936, it decided instead to electrify the Chesham branch, and the railcar schemes were abandoned. The LPTB's plan envisaged electric trains splitting at Chalfont & Latimer, with half of each train continuing to Amersham and half to Chesham.
Although some preparatory work was carried out, the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 brought the electrification north of Rickmansworth to a halt. First-class travel was abandoned by the LPTB, along with the Pullman cars, and the line was operated entirely as a shuttle service. In 1940 the Chesham branch was converted to autotrain
Autotrain
Autotrain may refer to:* Autotrain, a type of push-pull train incorporating a steam locomotive and specially fitted passenger coaches* Auto Train, a specific Amtrak passenger service* Auto-Train Corporation...
working, in which the trains could be driven from each end, thus avoiding the time-consuming repositioning of the locomotive. LNER C13 Class
GCR Class 9K
The Great Central Railway 9K and 9L classes were two related classes of 4-4-2T Atlantic steam locomotives. They were both intended for suburban passenger services. After the 1923 Grouping, they served the LNER as classes C13 and C14....
locomotives were used for this push-pull working, along with two three-car sets of antiquated Ashbury
Ashbury Railway Carriage and Iron Company Ltd
The Ashbury Carriage and Iron Company Limited was a manufacturer of railway rolling stock founded by John Ashbury in 1837 at Knott Mill in Manchester, England, near the original terminus of the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway...
passenger cars dating from 1898.
Nationalisation
On 1 January 1948, almost all railways in Britain—including the London Transport Passenger Board and the London and North Eastern Railway—were nationalised under the Transport Act 1947Transport Act 1947
The Transport Act 1947 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Under it the railways, long-distance road haulage and various other types of transport were acquired by the state and handed over to a new British Transport Commission for operation...
. The LPTB became the London Transport Executive
London Transport Executive
The London Transport Executive was the organisation responsible for public transport in the Greater London area, UK, between 1948-1962. In common with all London transport authorities from 1933 to 2000, the public name and operational brand of the organisation was London Transport.-Creation:On 1...
(LT), and the LNER became a part of British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
ways. In the Greater London Plan
Greater London Plan
The Greater London Plan of 1944, often referred to as the Abercrombie Plan, was a plan for the development and improvement of London commissioned by the Ministry of Works in 1942 and drawn up by Patrick Abercrombie....
of 1944 Sir Patrick Abercrombie
Patrick Abercrombie
Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie ) was an English town planner. Educated at Uppingham School, Rutland; brother of Lascelles Abercrombie, poet and literary critic.-Career:...
had strongly recommended a halt to further modern development in Chesham and along the Chess Valley to preserve the sensitive local environment, and there was thus little prospect for growth in passenger numbers on the branch.
For the first decade after nationalisation services to Chesham continued much as before, although the unification of the mainline companies meant a wider variety of locomotives operating services on the branch. For two weeks from 13 October 1952 LT experimented with a three-car lightweight diesel train on the route, but the train used had difficulty negotiating the line's sharp bends and the branch reverted to steam operations.
London Midland Region of British Railways
The London Midland Region was one of the six regions created on the formation of the nationalised British Railways and consisted of ex-London, Midland and Scottish Railway lines in England and Wales. The region was managed first from buildings adjacent to Euston Station and later from Stanier...
. Services on the branch were generally hauled by LMS Ivatt Class
LMS Ivatt Class 2 2-6-2T
The London, Midland and Scottish Railway Ivatt Class 2 2-6-2T is a class of light 'mixed-traffic' steam locomotive introduced in 1946.- Background :...
locomotives, although passenger trains continued to use the 1898 Ashbury cars. British Railways continued to operate goods services on the branch, although these declined steadily owing to competition from road haulage to the point at which coal deliveries were the only significant business.
By now the pre-war electrification scheme had been revived. In 1957 electrification between Rickmansworth and Amersham and Chesham began. Chalfont & Latimer's platforms were extended and a second platform was opened at Chesham on 3 July 1960 to prevent through operations to and from Baker Street from interfering with the Chesham–Chalfont & Latimer shuttle. An electric service using London Underground T Stock
London Underground T Stock
The T Stock was originally built in various batches by Metropolitan-Vickers and Birmingham RC&W for the Metropolitan Railway in 1927-31 for use on electric services from Baker Street and the City to Watford and Rickmansworth, though rarely some worked on the Uxbridge branch.The earlier batches were...
began operations between Chesham and Chalfont & Latimer on 16 August 1960, with former MR electric locomotives hauling the through trains to and from London. A steam locomotive was kept on standby in the new second platform at Chesham, in case of a failure of the electric trains. From June 1962 both the T Stock and the locomotive-hauled trains were replaced by the newly introduced London Underground A Stock.
The last scheduled London Transport steam passenger train on the branch left Chesham at 12.11 am on 12 September 1960. 1,917 passengers used the line that day, in comparison with a typical Sunday usage of around 100. Earlier on 11 September descendants of the Chesham residents who had attended Watkin's original meeting to promote the railway, along with 86 year old Albert Wilcox who had been present at the opening of the line, rode the steam shuttle to Chalfont & Latimer and back, and attended a ceremony in Chesham's Council Chamber. (Although the 12.11 am service from Chesham on 12 September 1960 was the last scheduled London Transport steam service to use the line, a steam train left Marylebone for Chesham each morning at 3.55 am to deliver newspapers, returning as the first passenger train from Chesham at 5.58 am. This journey to Marylebone was open to the public but was unadvertised and did not appear in published timetables. This arrangement continued to be operated by steam locomotive until 18 June 1962.) The Ashbury passenger cars, which by now had each covered around 800000 miles (1,287,472 km), were retired from service. The last steam-powered passenger services on the remaining non-electrified section between Amersham and Aylesbury ran on 9 September 1961. The line between Amersham and Aylesbury was handed over to British Rail, leaving Chesham as the westernmost point of the London Underground network. The goods yard at Chesham was closed in 1966, and a train hauled by a former GWR 5700 Class
GWR 5700 Class
The Great Western Railway 5700 Class is a class of 0-6-0 pannier tank steam locomotive, built between 1929 and 1950. 863 were built, making them the second most-produced British class of steam locomotive.- Overview :...
locomotive removed the track from the goods yard, the last steam service to use the line. On 17 October 1967 the newspaper train service and its return journey to Marylebone, by this time worked by a British Rail diesel multiple unit
Diesel multiple unit
A diesel multiple unit or DMU is a multiple unit train consisting of multiple carriages powered by one or more on-board diesel engines. They may also be referred to as a railcar or railmotor, depending on country.-Design:...
, was abandoned, leaving the branch exclusively operated by London Transport trains.
Closure proposals
Although LT had hoped that the electrification would boost revenue, the Chesham branch generated little income. In a period of recession LT was reluctant to continue subsidising a little-used branch line some distance outside its core area. Fares were drastically increased in 1970, leaving a monthly season ticket from Chesham to Baker Street costing £43 (about £ as of ). London Transport considered closing the branch, but it survived thanks to subsidies from the Ministry of Transport, Buckinghamshire County CouncilBuckinghamshire County Council
Buckinghamshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Buckinghamshire, in England, the United Kingdom. Its area of control does not include Milton Keynes, which is a unitary authority...
and the Greater London Council
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council which had covered a much smaller area...
. Sunday services on the branch were abolished as a cost-cutting measure, although this decision was reversed following protests.
In 1982 the future of the Chesham line came into serious question, as it became clear that the two bridges carrying the line into Chesham were deteriorating badly and that, unless the bridges were replaced, the branch could not continue to operate after 1986. By this time rail services in Buckinghamshire had been drastically cut back under the Beeching Axe
Beeching Axe
The Beeching Axe or the Beeching Cuts are informal names for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running British Railways, the nationalised railway system in the United Kingdom. The name is that of the main author of The Reshaping of British Railways, Dr Richard...
mass rail closure programme of the 1960s. The last passenger trains north of Aylesbury had run on 5 September 1966, and since then the future of the Amersham–Aylesbury route itself had been in serious doubt. The Greater London Council was scheduled for abolition, bringing their subsidy of the Chesham branch to an end. Buckinghamshire County Council was unwilling to pay for replacing the bridges, proposing instead that the station be relocated to the original proposed station site of the 1880s on the south side of the bridges. Safety concerns had led to a speed limit of 15 miles per hour (6.7 m/s) over the bridges, and the line appeared certain to be closed.
Revival
Although no part of the Chesham branch was in Greater London, the Greater London Council, as one of its last acts, granted £1,180,000 to replace the bridges. New bridges were built alongside the existing bridges to minimise disruption, and were rolled into place on 24 March 1986 and 14 April 1986.In 1989 the centenary of the branch saw a revival of interest in the line. Over the weekends of 1–2 and 8–9 July special services were run between Watford and Chesham, using two preserved Metropolitan Railway steam locomotives and a former MR electric locomotive. The service was a great success, with over 9,000 people travelling on the trains and large numbers of people travelling to the area to watch the trains. The success prompted LT to repeat the Steam on the Met event annually until 2000, although often running to Amersham rather than Chesham.
In the early 1990s the number of passengers using the branch stabilised at about 800 people each weekday. As of 2009, the Chesham branch saw 427,000 journeys each year. The proposal to close the Aylesbury–Marylebone route was dropped, and instead the line was upgraded and equipped with fast British Rail Class 165
British Rail Class 165
The British Rail Class 165 Turbo is a fleet of suburban diesel multiple units , originally specified by and built for British Rail, the then United Kingdom state owned railway operator. They were built by BREL at York Works between 1990 and 1992...
trains in the early 1990s. These reduced the travel time between Chalfont & Latimer and Marylebone to 33 minutes, increasing usage of the line as a commuter route. The Chesham branch was proposed as a terminus for the original Crossrail
Crossrail
Crossrail is a project to build a major new railway link under central London. The name refers to the first of two routes which are the responsibility of Crossrail Ltd. It is based on an entirely new east-west tunnel with a central section from to Liverpool Street station...
scheme, which would have seen Crossrail trains running from Paddington to serve the stations between Rickmansworth and Aylesbury and the Chesham branch, allowing London Transport to withdraw from Buckinghamshire and cut the Metropolitan line back to serve only the branches to Watford and Uxbridge. The bill proposing the scheme was defeated in Parliament and abandoned in 1995, and the revived scheme authorised by the Crossrail Act 2008
Crossrail Act 2008
The Crossrail Act 2008 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that authorises the construction of the Crossrail railway from Maidenhead and Heathrow Airport to Shenfield and Abbey Wood. The legislation was introduced by the then Secretary of State for Transport Douglas Alexander and...
did not include the branches to Aylesbury and Chesham. By this time the little-used Central line
Central Line
The Central line is a London Underground line, coloured red on the tube map. It is a deep-level "tube" line, running east-west across London, and, at , has the greatest total length of track of any line on the Underground. Of the 49 stations served, 20 are below ground...
branch from Epping
Epping tube station
Epping on the London Underground is the north-eastern terminus of the Central Line. The station before Epping is Theydon Bois, which is about three minutes travelling time away. Epping station is in the Epping Forest District of Essex...
to Ongar
Ongar tube station
Ongar tube station is a former London Underground station in the town of Chipping Ongar, Essex. Until its closure in 1994, it was the easternmost point of the Central line, and from 1961 until closure, it held the distinction of being the London Underground station farthest from Central...
had closed, with the last services running on 30 September 1994, leaving Chesham—already the westernmost point of the London Underground network since 1961's withdrawal from Aylesbury—as the northernmost point on the London Underground.
By the time London Underground operations were transferred to the newly created Transport for London
Transport for London
Transport for London is the local government body responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London in England. Its role is to implement the transport strategy and to manage transport services across London...
(TfL) in 2000, the A Stock trains were already 40 years old. The C Stock trains used on the Circle line, Hammersmith & City line
Hammersmith & City Line
The Hammersmith & City line is a subsurface London Underground line. It connects Hammersmith in the west with Barking in the east, running through the northern part of central London. It is coloured salmon pink on the Tube map...
and sections of the District line
District Line
The District line is a line of the London Underground, coloured green on the Tube map. It is a "sub-surface" line, running through the central area in shallow cut-and-cover tunnels. It is the busiest of the sub-surface lines. Out of the 60 stations served, 25 are underground...
and the D Stock
London Underground D78 Stock
The London Underground D Stock is a type of electric multiple unit used on the London Underground District Line . The entire fleet is due to be replaced with S Stock trains in 2015.- History :...
used on the remainder of the District line were also ageing, and no plans were in place for their replacement. Following lengthy and expensive negotiations, an order was placed in 2003 with Bombardier Transportation
Bombardier Transportation
Bombardier Transportation is the rail equipment division of the Canadian firm, Bombardier Inc. Bombardier Transportation is one of the world's largest companies in the rail-equipment manufacturing and servicing industry. Its headquarters are in Berlin, Germany....
for a fleet of new trains to take over all operations on the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City and District lines.