The Chesham branch is a single-track railway branch line in Buckinghamshire, England, owned and operated by the London Underground. It runs from a junction at Chalfont & Latimer station on the Metropolitan line for 3.89 miles (6.26 km) northwest to Chesham. 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 initially 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 only 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.
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. Most trains on the branch line were operating as a shuttle service between Chesham and the main line at Little Chalfont rather than as through trains to London. The opening in 1899 of the Great Central Railway at Marylebone station, 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 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 London Marylebone station and Chalfont & Latimer 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.
Background The English county of Buckinghamshire 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 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 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.
Early Chesham railway schemes
The Chiltern market town of Chesham 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 omnibus.) In 1887 a 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 station 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 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-drawn omnibus service between Chesham and Rickmansworth opened on 1 September 1887.
1885 LNWR junction scheme