K&ESR Buildings

Hello,

Does anybody know where I could get scale drawings for Tenterden and/or Bodiam stations? Also Tenterden box?

Also, and this is just for interest, what was the primary mainstay of the K&ESR economically?

 

Hi Chris,

Not exactly what you're looking for but Alphagrafix produce a 4mm scale card kit of a Colonel Stephens light railway station, which is surely based on a KESR one - I have it and it reminds me strongly of Bodiam station. They also produce a kit of a Derwent Valley Light Railway station in the same scale.

Could they be of use to you?

Regards,

Chris

 

Drawings here - 60p each!
Colonel Stephens Society Drawings Service

 

The Ashford, Tonbridge, Hastings triangle contained a great deal of farm produce that was difficult to get to market due to the poor roads of the day, hence The K&ESR's nickname - The Farmers Line. It is the main reason why our stations are often some way from the villages they are named after as passengers were not the main income. There was also the difficulty of getting goods into the area. Hops, fruit and sheep were some of the more significant outgoing items and Hodsons Mill at Robertsbridge had incoming grain and outgoing flour. You should find a lot more info in our museum's website: The Colonel Stephens Railway Museum

 

You probably know already, but the signalbox at Tenterden Town is a South Eastern Railway one, relocated during the early preservation era - from Chilham if memory serves me right.
The original K&ESR depended mainly on goods traffic - coal, roadstone, fertiliser (including 'shoddy' - wool waste - for the hop gardens) and general goods in, farm produce out. Although the passenger service was useful to the local communities, I don't imagine it ever brought in much revenue. Both goods and passenger business began to decline after WW1, with motor buses and motor lorries and improvements to roads.

 

Surely the main reason for the location/name of the KESR stations is down to the topography which allowed the most practical route for building the railway and the common railway practise of naming stations after the nearest settlement of any 'size'? (deliberate inverted commas, given that Tenterden was the only settlement between Robertsbridge and Headcorn that could aspire to such lofty heights as 'size'!)

Indeed, the KESR policy of station names was much more likely to be exactly the opposite of your theory, kesbobby. The suffix 'Road' was a regular euphemism for "this station is nowhere near this village, but the road goes to it" which the KESR had several examples of. Wittersham Road would more accurately have been named Rolvenden Layne (which is closer but rather smaller), for the same reason Frittenden Road could conceivably have been called Lashenden.

These illustrate the point (along with High Halden Road and Rolvenden*) that the stations were actually named to give the illusion to potential passengers that they served bigger settlements - and therefore attract more passengers from those settlements - than their actual locations, which were dictated by the topographical practicality of building a railway, even a 'light' one.

* Which was, I believe, originally called Tenterden, before the extension up the bank and northwards?