Chesham Project

and previously as at 30 December 2004

Progress as at 30th January 2005

My Chesham Project is called 'Duck Alley' (yes, it really does exist!) and is a fictional 15 inch gauge industrial railway set in Chesham, Buckinghamshire (UK) sometime during the period 1918 to 1930. The model's conception began when some friends discovered that there actually was a Watercress Railway in the area called Waterside, Chesham and that also there had been plans to build a tramway from Berkhamsted to Chesham. My friends research carried out in the mid 1980s can be found on the History pages attached.

Alongside the real History is my fictional account, giving the rational behind the line, the kind of traffic it would have carried and why it disappeared like nearly all the more interesting industrial lines before the Second World War...


	The following photographs inspired the creation of this model:


	It was the intimacy of the Watercress industry to the population the attracted me to this photo. The Watercress Beds end against the garden walls of the cottages. The wall on the right will roughly be what the wall in the Watercress bed scene will look like on the model.


	This is the real Duck Alley in the 1920s - I cannot model this due to space limitations. The timbers in the fore ground are part of Town Bridge


	This is Town Bridge circa 1932, Water Lane is in the foreground. Duck Alley is in the background.


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