John Scott-Morgan - The East Kent Railway: The Line That Ran to Nowhere

THE EAST KENT RAILWAY

THE LINE THAT RAN TO NOWHERE

Dedication

In memory of Ivor Gotheridge, an eccentric railway enthusiast and friend, who loved the East Kent Railway and travelled on it during his periodic holidays in Dover, sampling the delights of a truly British light railway.

THE LINE THAT RAN TO NOWHERE

JOHN SCOTT-MORGAN

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

Pen and Sword Transport

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

Copyright John Scott-Morgan, 2021

ISBN 978 1 52672 685 8

eISBN 978 1 52672 686 5

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52672 687 2

The right of John Scott-Morgan to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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I would like to thank the following people for their kind assistance during the writing of this volume, I would especially like to thank the late Richard Casserley who very kindly gave me permission to use his pictures from the H.C. Casserley collection, there are also pictures from the late Rev A.W. Mace, Ivor Gotheridge, J.W. Sparrow, S.W. Baker, Dennis Cullum, R.F. Roberts via Stephenson Locomotive Society, P.J. Garland, E.A. Woollard, Derek Cross via David Cross, A.W. Croughton, Ron Jarvis, G.S. Lloyd, C.T. Hamilton-Ellis, F. Butterfield and Tom Middlemass.

I would also like to thank the following for use of pictures, R.S. Carpenter, J.H. Aston, J.C.V. Mitchell, R.C. Stumpf, G. Gleeves and the LCGB Ken Nunn Collection.

I have made every effort to contact the copyright holders of pictures used in this book, however if I have left anyone out, I apologise and please contact me through the publisher.

Clapper, C.H. and Dalston, H.F.G., East Kent Light Railway, Railway Magazine March 1937.

Kidner, R.W., Standard Gauge Light Railways , Oakwood Press 1973.

Lawson Finch, M. and Garratt, S.R., The East Kent Railway Volumes 1 & 2, Oakwood Press, both 2003.

Mitchell, Vic and Smith, Keith, The East Kent Light Railway , Middleton Press 1989.

A long time ago, in the early 1980s, I went by car with my friend Ivor Gotheridge on a New Years Day car journey. It was very cold and there was snow on the ground, as we ventured further and further into East Kent. After an hour and a half we reached our destination, Tilmanstone Colliery in the East Kent coalfield, which was about to cease production and close.

We passed the colliery and continued along a route not far from the long abandoned road bed of the East Kent Railway, until we reached Eastry, which had been the junction for the lines to Canterbury Road and the branch to Richborough Port, past the abutments of the long abandoned over bridge, from where we made our way to the site of Canterbury Road station, which was by then just a tump of earth, with a shallow cutting running from it.