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Everyone knows that Amersham station is the furthest West on the tube network... right? Wikipedia says it, TfL says it, it's common knowledge. But why?

Amersham station's Longitude is 0:36:08 West, or 0.6023 degrees West of Greenwich. Chesham station's Longitude is 0:36:40 West. That's 0.6112 degrees West of Greenwich - ie further West!

Am I missing something? Can anyone explain this, or is it simply a common mistake?

Yes, you're right according to Google Earth.
Tube maps can be very deceiving.

Furthermore, Streetmap shows Chesham station as being about 300m west of Amersham station: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x ... search.srf

Here's the map image itself:

Root wrote:Everyone knows that Amersham station is the furthest West on the tube network... right?

( ... Stuff about the juxtaposition of Amersham and Chesham snipped ...)

Am I missing something? Can anyone explain this, or is it simply a common mistake?

I was going to suggest it was all to do with the distance from the sand drag at Ongar, but a look at Clive's UndergrounD Line Guides shows Amersham as 84.83km from Ongar and Chesham as 87.93km from Ongar.

The other possibility is that they've opted not to count Chesham as it's not on the "main" Metropolitan Line.

Cheers,

Barry

Seems nonsense to me - why would they discount Chesham from being a Tube station because it's on a branch?!

Although Chesham is further West than the Amersham station building, it is possible that the westernmost end of the platform at Amersham is further west than Chesham.

Even if this is not the case, the furthest west track on LU is definitely not Chesham as LU actually own the track for about 2km west of Amersham even though all the services on it are run by Chiltern.

My vote is for Chesham, as that's the furthest west you can actually travel in a tube train in passenger service.

greatkingrat wrote:Although Chesham is further West than the Amersham station building, it is possible that the westernmost end of the platform at Amersham is further west than Chesham.

That may be the case, as the Chesham station platform runs almost North-South while the Amersham platforms run East-West. The Westernmost tip of the platform at Amersham, according to the street map, is probably still not as far West as Chesham, but if you include the sidings it definitely is.

Still, it's confusing.