Cranleigh Line

Portsmouth Direct Line

North Downs Line

to Reading

New Guildford Line

Guildford

Guildford tunnel

(833 yards)

St Catherine's Hill tunnel

(133 yards)

Shalford Junction

North Downs Line

to Redhill and Gatwick Airport

Portsmouth Direct Line

to Portsmouth

Peasmarsh Junction

Mole Valley Line

Baynards Tunnel

(381 yards)

Horsham Junction & Arun Valley Line

Stammerham Junction

Arun Valley Line

The Cranleigh line was a linking railway line that connected Guildford on the Portsmouth-London line, the county town of Surrey, with the West Sussex market town of Horsham on another line to the south coast. The line ran through Cranleigh and measured 19.25 miles (31 km). The line closed on 14 June 1965 four months before its centenary, the only Surrey railway closure in the mid-1960s stripping out known as the Beeching Axe, officially termed "The Reshaping of British Railways".

The opportunity to construct the Cranleigh line came about from the fierce competition between the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) (and its predecessor) and the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) for the lucrative Portsmouth traffic. A branch of the LSWR's London to Southampton line had reached Guildford in 1845, was extended to Godalming in 1849 and then to Havant in 1859. In 1844 the LSWR drew up plans to construct a line to the then important port of Shoreham-by-Sea from a point near Horsham.

Upon hearing of this possible encroachment the LBSCR's predecessor acted quickly in promoting a parliamentary bill authorising a line to Shoreham. The London and Brighton (Steyning Branch) Railway Act received royal assent on 18 June 1846 and the company's engineer, R. Jacombe-Hood, was instructed to survey the line. Its starting portion to Horsham from Three Bridges on the LBSCR's direct line between London and Brighton was laid in 1848.

By that time the railway companies began to experience financial difficulties coinciding with the economic recession of the late 1840s and their plans for the Horsham area were put on hold. It would be a further ten years before the plans for a line to the coast, to Shoreham and directly to Chichester, were actioned, opening on 1 July 1861. The opening of the line was seen by a trio of West Sussex businessmen as an opportunity to promote a railway project offering the LSWR a route to these places via Guildford, itself connected directly to the Midlands and West, particularly for slower-moving freight.

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Wikipedia