Geoff Marshall: London's Lost Railways Ep.17 - Chessington Branch

Hello, good afternoon from outside Malden Manor Station, Zone 4 in Southwest London. 5 years ago in 2021, I had a series on this YouTube channel called London's Lost Railways, where I explored old, abandoned, and disused railway lines within Greater London. One of the things that came out of that was a comment that I remember where somebody said, "But what about Jeff, that bit of track on the Chessington branch that keeps going after Chessington South?" And I never got round to exploring it or making a video about it. Today, that changes as we ride the whole line and get out at all four stations here to discover the history of the branch down to Chessington and why that bit of track still exists. So, this is the line built by the Southern Railway to serve the growing housing and industrial area that were developing at the time. The first section opened in 1938 when it branched off from Motspur Park down to Tolworth. And the following year, in 1939, construction continued with the two stations opening at Chessington. The outbreak of the Second World War then halted construction, but the line was very much meant to continue with another station at Malden Manor, and then another just to the north of Leatherhead before rejoining Southern's existing railway line. And the station names could have been different, too. Malden Manor was almost called Old Malden, and the two Chessingtons were originally called Chessington Court and Chessington Grange in the planning stages. But the intriguing part is that there is a small section of railway line that extends beyond Chessington South that has never been used. Work was done to build an embankment, and the line does continue on for a short while. It's just that trains have never run along it. And I'll be going to explore that later. The stations on the branch were all designed by James Robb Scott. He was the chief architect for the Southern Railway at the time, and these classic Art Deco designs were made with minimal maintenance in mind, as all the stations' main feature are these long concrete cantilevered canopies, curved pillarless roofs, quite different to many other stations that were being built at the time. They also featured small circular portholes, since filled in, which originally let in natural daylight. Other glass panels that once existed around the station have now also been replaced with concrete as well. But the stations still look so great. The other three stations, all four stations in total, have this design, this concrete curved arching roof, which I love, by the way. I love the design here. Southern actually referred to their Art Deco buildings as marine style, but they've also been compared to Odeon Art Deco cinemas as well. And strangely, I just love the feeling of these stations with their concrete echoey passageways. There's something quite delightful about them. And one detail which many people miss that you can see from the outside is that the stations were built with lift shafts, but the lifts were never installed. And when the line opened, services were more frequent than they are now, with trains every 20 minutes. Nowadays, there are two trains an hour in each direction, a half-hourly service. And when filming this, I literally just missed one, so had half an hour to wait. No problem, as I grabbed a drink from the coffee shop immediately outside the front of the station, which intriguingly turned out to be an Only Fools and Horses-themed cafe, which filled me with joy, because it reminded me that even within Zone 6 in London, it only becomes obvious how interesting places are when you actually get out at stations and explore what's there. Love it. (1/4)

But onto the train. It's literally just under 2 minutes down to the next stop, but not before we've crossed a three-span, 42-m long viaduct over the Hogsmill River. That's a tributary off of the River Thames. And that takes us down to the next stop at Tolworth. Taking shelter out of the sun, such a bright day, by the nettles growing through the fence. Behind here, you might be able to hear the rumble of like a JCB or some kind of heavy machinery, cuz there's an aggregates concrete firm just in there, but we'll talk about that in a second. On the other platform, the concrete roofs though, the canopies, the curved concrete, they are here at Tolworth. I just think that they're not as long as the ones at Malden Manor. Now, it just makes me want to go back and like count the spans and be like, "Which of the station has the most concrete roof sections?" It's probably Malden Manor. Steps down to the passenger subway, where it's very echoey again, and that gives me an idea. Just had a thought. Cuz there's a really good echo in the passageway here, I bet if I go and tap out with my Oyster down there on the validator, you'll hear the beep echo its way all down here. Stay there. Don't move. Echo coming up. Yeah? Now, Tolworth is famous for its huge roundabout and the imposing Tolworth Tower, but at the station, I find something completely brilliant. It's a community railway partnership center known as the community train. And at the back, I get shown around the garden that they have, where they have regular meetups with volunteers. There's a link in the description for all the stations in this area if you want to get involved with your local one. And then, I'm even shown some walking maps that they've drawn up of the local area, which even includes the short section of the line that I'm going to find later. And they even label it as the ghost railway line. Yeah. And the reason why I know there's a concrete aggregates firm just down there, in fact, I can see Oh, there's a freight train parked up in the siding. We'll get a shot of it as we go past in a minute. It's cuz I stood here on the platform for a reason which I cannot remember, but it was like in the 1990s. It would have been about 7:45 in the morning. It was a packed commuter train, pretty much doing as I did now, looking down in the distance and thinking, "Why is there a locomotive parked up there?" And the early train enthusiast in me was like, "Ooh, there's a locomotive on the Chessington branch. I didn't realize that there was a some freight movement that happened here." But freight trains do use the line here down to Tolworth. We'll get a shot of it as we depart on the train, which is coming now. Calling at Chessington and Chessington South. The next station is Chessington North. At Chessington North, there is a sign that says, "Alight at the next station for Chessington World of Adventures." And that is because Chessington South is where you go for Chessington World of Adventures, the theme park. But I'm so old now, I can remember when Chessington, did you know this, didn't used to be World of Adventures, it used to be a zoo. And the advert on the radio back in the 1990s or '80s was, "Come and visit Chessington, Chessington, Chessington Zoo." And Chessington South was the station for that, not Chessington North. Um, concrete canopy roof here, excellent. I wonder what else is at Chessington North. Chessington North is very much a commuter station, which gets me wondering about passenger numbers on this branch and which is the least used station out of the four. So, here are the numbers from the last set of figures. We can see that Chessington South is the least used and Tolworth is the most. (2/4)

Also, artist Lionel Stanhope has one of his fantastic Southern Railway typography station signs here. You've probably seen many under railway bridges all over South London. It's nice to see some here as well. There was one back at Malden Manor that you may have seen at the beginning, and there's one at Tolworth, too. So, back onto the train, heading to what I think is my favorite station on this branch as we head for Chessington South. And memories of me coming here many years ago as a child to visit the zoo come flooding back to me. So, if I was ever to do End of the Line National Rail edition, I would have to come here to Chessington South. And the first thing I will point out is the abandoned platform over there. Except, technically, it's not an abandoned platform, cuz it was just never used. They built two platforms here at Chessington South, but because the line wasn't actually finished, they've only ever used this one platform here on this side. And that one over there, I don't think there was even a footbridge built over to get to it. So, quite how you get access to it, I don't know. But Rusty Rails actually got a great shot of the rails on the platform as I came in on the train. And right now, it's still got the concrete, it's still got the curved roof with the little portholes, but then a lot of uh a lot of greenery growing its way up. I wonder when the last time that was cut back. So, not a disused platform, but a platform that has never seen passenger or train use. I wonder if they do run the occasional train down there though, because if you look into the distance and there's a shot here, you can see that there is points and a fence in the distance. So, you probably could run a train down. What if like the aggregates loco sort of comes down here and reverses here or something? Maybe it does that. But we're going to go for a wander. And the line onwards from Chessington South was never completed because a few months after it opened in 1939, came the Second World War, and all construction was halted. Years later, after the war, when there was maybe the money and possibility of finishing off the line, greenbelt legislation meant that it now could not be constructed. And that's why Chessington remains a branch line rather than a through line. For the best view of the tracks heading south, just stand on the bridge outside the station and look south. And whilst I'm doing that, I'm also reminded that bizarrely, you might not know this, the Chessington branch is one of the possible options being considered to be part of the Crossrail 2 network. Should that ever be built in the future, it would bring double the amount of trains every 15 minutes to this part of the line. And whilst you've been looking at that map, I've walked about 10 minutes south down the road. So, I am walking down Chalky Lane. It's a dead-end road and this little path down here, we should get to a point where the railway should have, would have, or did it cross? Basically, I can't find a definitive answer. The excellent resource that is the incredible disused stations website, link below obviously, discusses this and it shows photos. It shows a map showing where tracks definitely came to and then it shows an aerial photograph showing there's no tracks and then another photo where there is tracks and basically there seems to be confusion. Nobody can really say for sure how far the tracks came to or was the embankment built but tracks not laid and did the tracks or embankment come across this point at Chalky Lane or not? I'm going to get to the point basically where the railway line should have crossed. (3/4)

So, it might be hard to tell, but I've checked on my phone. I've done the thing where I followed the blob down and this is the point you can see where the railway would have crossed here cuz you can see where just over there, if I drop to a Google Earth Street View satellite image and go into 3D and spin around, you can see that the railway is just over there. The tracks do end maybe just 20, 30, 40, 50 m away and I wondered if they would have crossed Chalky Lane here. Were there any signs of a cutting or a bridge here? There isn't. It's also hard to see. I'll point my camera over there, but you can kind of tell just to the left of where that gate is. That gate leads to a path, but just to the left of the trees there looks like there is some kind of embankment up there. It's hard to see on camera, but I can see it in real life through the trees. There is an embankment there. So, the railway would have just gone across Chalky Lane just here and carried on down that embankment which I think they started to build. Trains to Leatherhead from Chessington would have been here. Okay, it feels like I finally done the last episode of London's Lost Railways and I can get back to Chessington now. And I'm back at the station to get the train heading back into London. What a magnificent day. Thank you to everybody that I met and spoke to at all four stations. Come and ride this branch line yourself. Come and see the wonders that is the concrete Art Deco at Morden and Tolworth and the Chessingtons down here and just come and have your own adventure as I have done here today in Chessington. Thank you very much. Thanks for watching. See you in the next video.