The historic ‘Chesham’ carriages returning to the limelight
From forgotten to Farringdon… how the Bluebell’s Metropolitan carriages finally returned to the big stage.
How we lament the passage into history of the main line wooden-bodied coach… From Didcot’s freed Colletts of ‘GWR 150’ in the 1980s, to the Derby veterans running at speed in Ireland until 2005, we have been truly blessed, and deprived, of some remarkable stock running on the national network in the preservation era.
The latest, and perhaps last, of these fully authentic trains was the Bluebell’s four exquisitely restored Metropolitan Railway bogie carriages.
It perhaps stretches the point to describe the metro system of the London Underground as ‘main line’, but a preserved railway it certainly isn’t and the presence of these timber-bodied vehicles in the very heart of the metropolis between 2013 and 2019 was a very special thing indeed.
Matched with the Metropolitan’s 1898 engine that was never officially built, ‘Met 1’, these varnished teak carriages have starred on runs through the original cut-and-cover tunnels in the 150th year of the world’s first subterranean railway, and a return ‘home’ to their final outpost in revenue-earning service on the Buckinghamshire-Hertfordshire border. The ‘Mets’, also known as the ‘Cheshams’, have certainly led eventful lives. The set originates from a batch of 50 40-foot-long carriages built for the ‘Met’ between 1898 and 1900. The first 32 carriages were built by the Ashbury Carriage, Wagon & Iron Company in Manchester but, owing to capacity constraints, the next 12 were built by Cravens Railway Carriage & Wagon Company in Sheffield and the final six at the ‘Met’s’ own Neasden works.
They were known at the time as the ‘Bogie Stock’, highlighting the main difference from the earlier rigid eight-wheelers, some of which survive today as grounded beach chalets at St Helens on the Isle of Wight. Originally electrically lit and steam-heated stock (until 1906), the ‘Bogies’ were gradually converted into EMU use, where they ran on the East London Line and what is now the Hammersmith & City line. They were all eventually withdrawn by 1938, but were stored as contingency for the impending war, with two six-coach sets put back into service to cover for rolling stock damaged and dilapidated through the years of conflict.
All but five were scrapped after the war, but the final survivors were, remarkably, converted back to steam
stock in 1940, as two three-coach push-pull sets (the sixth coach a rebuilt 1899 experimental electric motor coach) for the Chalfont & Latimer to Chesham branch, alternating one week on, one week off.
These six coaches were used on the almost fourmile branch in the hands of elderly Great Central ‘C13’ 4-4-2Ts and latterly Ivatt ‘Mickey Mice’ until 1960, when electrification of the Chesham branch left them surplus to the needs of a forward-thinking Underground.
BLUEBELL TAKES STOCK
Their fate hung in the balance until 1961, when the nascent Bluebell Railway, having only been open a few months and with precious little money to spend, was looking for cheap, high-capacity stock. The railway only had two Southern bogie coaches, but passenger numbers were rapidly on the rise and it needed a quick fix before being overwhelmed by demand.
The cheapest coaches available were the six ‘Mets’ that London Transport was selling for only £65 each (£1,500 today). The Bluebell bought four, another went to the London Transport Museum, then situated at Syon Park, Brentford, while the sixth was scrapped.
The set was used to carry the Bluebell’s visitors for two years, until 1963 when it was briefly returned to LT metals for the Metropolitan centenary celebrations.
However, when the coaches returned to the Bluebell, they slowly started to deteriorate, suffering from leaking roofs and rotting interiors as their age and intensive wear finally began to tell.
Being close-coupled between vehicles, they could not be used individually, and in 1969 they became the first stock to move to the storage sidings at Horsted Keynes, infamously used for condemned locomotives in LBSCR days and Kent Coast carriages in the BR era.
However, despite not being of Southern origin, superficial restoration of the set began and, by 1974, three of the four coaches were stripped of their drab LTera brown paint and reverted to a natural wood finish. This new look made them attractive to film makers, including Metro-Land, the BBC documentary film presented by Sir John Betjeman, first broadcast in 1973.
It soon became clear though that a full restoration was required, and this was beyond the Bluebell’s capabilities at the time, so the set was put into storage in Bluebell’s carriage shed at Horsted Keynes.
Full of spare coach seats and doors from other unrestored carriages, while dry rot began to set in, the future of the ‘Cheshams’ looked bleak. The shed was progressively cleared of other stock to make more space for other restorations but, by a turn of luck, the Chesham coaches managed to survive.
When the BBC again selected them for a filming job for an episode of the 1985 series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the fortunes of these valuable carriages turned. The compartments were emptied of the ‘clutter’ into a container provided by the Beeb.
Sparked by their rare, but welcome, appearance, Martin Lock, the railway’s former carriage and wagon trustee, decided that restoration was feasible and put together a team to plan the project, named BASH (Bluebell Ashbury Supporters and Helpers).
They needed to raise the required £35,000 to restore the coaches to their 1920s lined and varnished teak finish as the Bluebell was in no position to fund it. BASH organised a number of fundraising ventures, including bric-a-brac-style sales, obtaining sponsorship for individual items on the coaches and seeking donors in return for guaranteed seats on the first train.
Teak (now a protected species) was sourced from various sources: school lab benches, doors from Kodak in Harrow, a grounded LCDR coach within a cricket pavilion and offcuts from a repaired church steeple.
The seats were retrimmed in a reproduction London Transport moquette, produced by the original manufacturer from the original loom cards, with the help of the London Transport Museum, which also provided two doors from the sixth ‘Chesham’ vehicle.
The first pair (Third No. 394 and Brake Third No. 387) were completed after seven years’ work in January 1999. Fittingly, the pair were sent for display at Rickmansworth station, in the heart of ‘Metroland’, for what was thought to be the last of the ‘Steam on the Met’ events, displayed with Neasden 0-4-4T ‘Met 1’ in May 2000 – albeit static.
Composite No. 368 was completed and returned to service in May 2002, leaving First/Third Composite No. 412 to be completed in December 2006.
A relaunch gala in July 2007 finished off the 16-year restoration project and reunited the full set with the emblematic 0-4-4T, this time in working condition.
LURE OF METROLAND
However, their story took a most remarkable twist after it was revealed that they were to return to London – this time to run through the tunnels proper for the system’s 150th anniversary in 2013 (SR396).
On January 13 and 20 of that year, the coaches carried fare-paying passengers on the ‘Underground Pioneer’, naturally with ‘Met 1’ at one end and 1923 electric ‘Bo-Bo’ Sarah Siddons on the other, preempting a series of brief returns to the capital’s ‘mini main line’. As well as trips over the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines, perhaps the most poignant was the 125th anniversary of the Chesham branch itself. The antique forerunners of the modern ‘S’ stock bade their final farewell to London in 2019 for the 150th year of the District Line.
Modern signalling may have stymied future heritage trains over the four rails of the Underground (SR495), but the Bluebell’s ‘Met set’ continues to play its own key part. For 59 years after they were serenaded by the Sussex line in its hour of need, these former commuter train carriages are yet again at the forefront of the line’s plans – this time to reinstate services following the easing of lockdown restrictions, thanks to their individual, social distancing-compatible compartments.
Perhaps by accident more than design, but not for the first time, the decision to rescue and subsequently restore the ‘Cheshams’ has validated the Bluebell’s bold decision to save them six decades ago.