Chesworth and the North Sussex Railway

[whart57]

In the best traditions of popular English novels, and a very long-running radio serial, Chesworth is a fictional Sussex town which bears more than a passing resemblance to Horsham. A fictional town needs a fictional railway, and Chesworth is the terminus of the North Sussex Light Railway, one of the less ramshackle Colonel Stephens affairs. From Chesworth the line meanders through fields and woods until it joins the LBSCR mainline at Gatwick. Not the airport, that is still a score or two years into the future (it opened in the 1930s) but the racecourse.

 

An imagining of this imaginary light railway is being built by Horsham model railway club, and monthly progress reports are posted on the blog:

 

 

I am opening this thread as a link for ease of navigation between the two sections of rmweb, but feel free to comment here.

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by whart57

[David C]

Looks like an interesting backstory for a fictional light railway. I look forward to seeing the project develop.

 

David C

 

[whart57]

I had forgotten to take a picture of the bridge under construction for last month's update. I have now redressed this and updated the blog

 

[whart57]

I've updated the blog with July's report

 

 

[whart57]

We now have just the one long Wednesday left, and we need to set priorities.

 

However the station building is finished and partly bedded in.

 

[whart57]

We had a good show in Dorking this weekend. A constant stream of people asking questions and appreciating what we have done so far. I will be updating the blog over then next week or so.

 

[whart57]

It's Horsham club Open Day this coming weekend - Saturday April 6. The club's 00 Finescale layout, Chesworth, will be there, showing off the progress made on the Holbrook station section. (As will your blogger's own Maenamburi layout, based on the State Railway of Thailand). The Dog and Bacon pub is nearly complete, it just needs the pub sign and some vegetables in the garden. Apparently back in the 1940s and 50s the owner of the cottages sold beans and other veg to locals and passers by.

 

 

This picture, taken on a club night, shows a couple of day trippers have called in for lunch in their Oxford Diecast motors.

 

A travelling crane has also turned up in the goods yard, not sure why, except that one of our members had an itch to scratch-build the K&ESR crane.

 

 

The information came from the magazine of the Colonel Stephens Society plus some computer manipulation of the two published photos of the crane. The model was mainly scratchbuilt out of Plastikard but riding on Parkside chassis. The chassis needed to be cut and shut for the much shorter wheelbase of these vehicles. Other bits are etched gears and fine chain sourced out on the internet.

 

The Open Day is, as I said, Saturday April 6, and doors open from 10 am to 4 pm.

 

The venue is the St Leonards Church Hall, Cambridge Rd, Horsham RH13 5ED. Street parking is available in the streets around though I should point out that this is a residential area and local residents are also parking their cars in the street.