page_title: West Sussex Railway
section_title: Archaeology
hierarchical_section_title: West Sussex Railway / Archaeology
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of the remains of where the West Sussex Railway/Hundred of Manhood and Selsey Tramway crossed the Chichester canal
context_page_description: The West Sussex Railway was a standard gauge light railway between Chichester to Selsey, in West Sussex. The line, which opened in 1897, was also known as Hundred of Manhood and Selsey Tramway. It was opened as a rail tramway in order to avoid having to comply with regulations that managed conventional railways in the United Kingdom. The line was built under the auspices of the light railway entrepreneur, Colonel Stephens, who would later manage the line as the West Sussex Railway.
  In December 1910 the line was inundated when an embankment failed at Pagham Harbour. It was not reinstated so work had to be carried out to raise the line above the waters. Although the line was successful in the decades before the First World War, it suffered financially as road transport increased in the 1920s. Despite attempts to be more efficient through modernisations, such as the introduction of petroleum driven rail car services, the railway closed to all traffic in January 1935. Very little remains of the railway's infrastructure because of land redevelopment and urban expansion along its permanent way.
context_section_description: For the modern railway explorer this is one of the least rewarding lines to trace as the formation was almost completely at ground level, and almost nothing remains except a half mile section alongside Pagham harbour where the track was raised following the inundation of 1910. A section of about a quarter of a mile, now a farm track between Pagham Harbour and the Selsey Golf Club and a quarter of a mile section (now a public footpath) west of Hunston Village can be traced. The northern end of the latter ends at the abutments of the now defunct Tramway bridge across the Chichester Canal. A short section of trackbed is now a footpath from north of the Chichester Canal to Stockbridge Road, Chichester. The platforms of Hunston and Chalder station can also still be located in fields although badly overgrown.
caption: The remains of where the railway crossed the Chichester canal
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