Kent & East Sussex Railway

Ah. I don't receive the Phoenix.

 

That links to a "General Reconstruction Effort" appeal, not one for the buildings.

 

The donation link posted by @H Cloutt is the correct one, also appearing in the RVR post linked below. The blog makes clear that:
“Our two major benefactors are generously covering the basic cost of rebuilding the 2.1/2 mile missing link but Rother Valley Railway Heritage Trust (RVRHT) must raise the funds to finish off the Robertsbridge Junction Station site. That includes the station building, loco watering facility, loco shed and carriage shed.”

https://rvrailway.blogspot.com/2024/12/works-start-on-robertsbridge-station.html?m=1

So please send all your money

 

I think I read somewhere that the cost of the Station Building was covered by a legacy and that the Carriage Shed and Engine Shed were estimated at £200,00 each.

 

£400,000 each (they’ll be very good, like everything else on the RVR) - so please send all your money, mine isn’t quite enough

 

Well done to all concerned for an excellent Dwarves event today.

 

Well, I asked, and it seems we might be able to do something. I hope to be able to provide updates on here as and when the information is available. However, for any Austerity fans, I suggest you try to get your Northiam fix in the net month or so........

 

My congratulations too. It was great to see Marcia pulling a decent load (3 vintage coaches) up Tenterden bank. Judy too - an amazing bit of Bagnall design (everything lower - including the cab floor with somehow still just enough height for the crew to stand up). And Willy was somewhat bigger than I’d expected (as the actress said to the Bishop) - quite an impressive machine. Hastings & Noel (Terrier 2678) were the ‘big engines’ yesterday

Gervase, repainted but still awaiting the boiler, was waiting outside Rolvenden works - next time! 4253 and Maunsell making good progress inside. Someone said Northiam’s been sold as alluded above.

The day ended with the 0-4-0’s triple-heading five coaches from Wittersham to Tenterden. They needed coal at Rolvenden then took Tenterden bank in style, and I think I spotted @Robin Moira White on the level crossing gates.

Despite the late arrival (due to the coal stop) I still made the last bus, back to Headcorn, in seconds flat.

At Headcorn I had a few minutes to wait so I crossed over the footbridge and took a little walk on a public footpath, finding the former KESR 1920s concrete platform face still there in the undergrowth, just outside the boundary fence. A surprising survival really since the Southern Railway side of the same platform was obliterated (for a Channel Tunnel freight loop) in the 1990s.

A good day out.

 

Don't say that. Someone will only start a campaign to get us to extend to Headcorn!!!!

 

As you probably realise its only the country end of the 1920s concrete platform that survives. This was built by the SR in the late 1920s as part of a rebuild of headcorn station that added the through lines as a result of increasing channel traffic. Prior to the rebuild Headcorn had the standard SECR station layout of staggered platforms. The Up platform was on the London side of the footbridge and the original K&ESR platform was the backside of this. As a consequence the new East Sussex platform when the station was rebuilt was built around the curve towards Tenterden and at its country end was some distance from the mainline. Thats why the rump has survived when the channel tunnel freight loop was built in the the 1990s. Ironically the freight loop has only very rarely been used and with the opening of HS1 will never be used for its original purpose now.

 

Are any more details forthcoming?!

 

Jeez, grow some patience, will you? I only asked the question at the weekend.

 

Another excellent Dwarves day yesterday. Rode the triple header this time. Absolutely brilliant. The ride in the leading carriage was a tad lively and the racket the trio made ascending Tenterden Bank was an aural delight. I hope it was a success and that the KESR can find some more dwarves for a similar future event.

 

Sadly I could not make it. But the videos I have seen are stunning.

If there is a repeat event next year, I'll make sure it is in my diary.

 

Where else could they go next? ;-)

 

Colonel Stephens was involved with a number of ultimately abortive extensions to the K&ESR including a couple the Headcorn end, Northiam to Rye and the most bizarre of all - the Robertsbridge and Pevensey Light Railway, which would have involved crossing over the SE&CR line, presumably on the level and then going southwards through a most attractive but almost uninhabited part of East Sussex. Even now, over 100 years later, there is nothing much in between these two places except a few very small villages. I believe that the proposed route also involved gradients as steep as 1 in 40 so if anyone is looking for a really silly extension project, this one must surely take the biscuit. Goodness knows how it would ever have made any money and it certainly wouldn't today. Still. for Colonel Stephens, Hope spring eternal seems to have been his motto!

 

On the 02/04/2000 opening day of the Bodiam extension the journalist Christopher Fildes stood in for Sir Alistair Morton (former Eurotunnel supremo), who'd been invited to perform the official opening ceremony but was indisposed. Mr. Fildes is reported to've said "You cannot stop here - on the day ..... the Wealden Belle runs to, and through, the Channel Tunnel, Sir Alistair will be there himself."

I'm waiting impatiently.

 

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