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In 1885 a German company took over the Chilworth gunpowder mills near Guildford and installed a narrow-gauge tramway, which operated until the works closed in 1920. The tramway was extended several times in order to service new sections of the factory which were built for the manufacture of a different form of gunpowder and the modern propellant cordite. Information, deduced from documentary sources and physical remains, is presented on the layout of the tramway, the track, the bridges and the trams. The most striking surviving feature is a swingbridge, which carried a branch of the tramway across the millstream and thence to the local railway station.