This video from Jago Hazzard reveals that what we know as the Chessington Branch was originally meant to be a secondary main line to Leatherhead.
Some work took place beyond Chessington South, as Wikipedia explains:
Work to extend beyond Chessington was halted by the outbreak of World War II, with track laid beyond Chessington South as far as Chalky Lane, and preparatory works continuing further south.
This included an embankment built by the Royal Engineers as a military exercise from Chalky Lane as far south as Chessington Wood, close to where the next station at Malden Rushett would have been built.
A second station to serve Ashtead, namely at its northern extreme, was also planned.
After the war green belt legislation put a stop to any resumption because Ashtead Common was given protective status.u
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5 comments:
For Ashtead read Leatherhead. And for the evident (unacknowledged?) source for the Wikipedia entry see Alan A Jackson's 'London's Local Railways'.
No, the plan was for an Ashtead North station before the line reached Leatherhead.
Well Jackson writes of 'the proposed station sites at Rushett and Leatherhead North', and the existing Ashtead station is itself to the north of Ashtead, indeed on the edge of woodland (grid reference 180590) and it would have been dificult to site an 'Ashtead North' station that did not lie to the south of it.
Incidentally Alan Jackson lived at Ashtead.
Wikipedia links to a 1938 Railway Magazine article about the line. This has a map that shows a second station at Ashtead.
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