Underground, Overground by Andrew Martin Page B

favourites, with pale blue tiles, like an old municipal swimming pool.Watkin attended the opening of Marylebone station in a bath chair, having recently suffered a stroke. He would die two years later, in 1901. His vision was only half-fulfilled, but his railway remained romantic and different until recent times.
BY THE WAY: THE FATE OF THE GRAND VISION
    The 1920s saw the creation of Metroland, the most important social consequence of the Metropolitan’s expansion north, and we will be visiting Metroland shortly. But in 1933 the railway, which had tried to become a main line, would suffer the indignity of amalgamation into public ownership as part of London Transport.
    In 1936 London Transport ceased operating passenger services beyond Aylesbury, but it contracted the London & North Eastern Railway to operate freight to Verney Junction until 1947, and things remained quite heroic on the north of the curtailed ‘Extension’ for some years afterwards. Until 1961 the line was electrified only as far as Rickmansworth, where steam locomotives were attached or detached in place of electric ones. In the same year the stations north of Amersham were given over to British Rail. But the Metropolitan Line of today still has more stations outside the M25 than any other line. It has four: Chesham, Amersham, Chalfont and Chorleywood. Its nearest rival in this respect, the Central Line, only has one: Epping, and whereas that is in Zone 6, Amersham and Chesham are in Zone 9, a fantastical concept created especially for them. And until December 2010 the northern stretch of the ‘Extension’ featured a charming side-show: the Chesham Shuttle.
    When the Met first reached Chesham, in 1889, the townsfolk thought the growth of their town would be inexorable as a result. Their industries, all beginning with ‘B’ (boots, beer, brushes), would boom. The connection was inaugurated with aparty on 15 May 1889. When Sir Edward Watkin arrived to take part, the town band played ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’; the bells of St Mary’s Church in Chesham pealed joyfully; a seven-course luncheon was served in the goods station. The cry went up, ‘At last, we are on the main line!’ And so they were – for three years, until the Met decided to carry on to Amersham, leaving Chesham high and dry on a branch. This relegation was not really the cause of the decline of brush-making, which was the town’s main industry. That was down to the introduction of nylon bristles. But the people of Chesham moaned about the shuttle: the waiting room at Chalfont & Latimer was too hot, or too cold; there were leaves on the line. And sometimes the drivers of steam locos (until 1961) would forget to couple up to the carriages, pulling away from Chesham with no train behind. But the drivers liked the shuttle. ‘It’s a lovely turn to work’, one of them once told me. ‘There are hardly any signals.’ Classical music was played over the intercom in the pleasingly solid and simple, green and white waiting room at Chalfont, while its counterpart at Chesham was bedecked with Station Garden of the Year winners’ certificates. (Essentially, Chesham has won the Station Garden of the Year competition every single year since its inception.) The line in-between supplies views of farmhouses, deer, sheep, gently rolling hills and the River Chess, and it is almost as strange to see these things from an Underground train as it would be to see the African savannah.
    On 12 December 2010 the shuttle ceased operations, and Metropolitan trains began to terminate at both Amersham and Chesham. The chairman of the Chesham Society welcomed the ending of the shuttle. ‘I suppose you could say it’s reinstating us to what we were originally. We are a main line, and a lot of people travel on it, so I think it’s an excellent thing.’
    Chesham’s return to the main line coincided with the start of the