After breakfast, where the lady serving asked if I’d enjoyed Greenwich, I finished packing and headed southwards to Tenterden, the K&ESR was only part of the reason for the visit as will be explained. For a change there were no traffic problems at all so I arrived at the railway in plenty of time for the first train. The loco for the day was the ubiquitous BR Standard Class 4 Mixed Traffic, the only unusual thing (for anoraks) was that it’s marked 4P and 4F separately on the cab sides, not 4MT (I don’t have a clue what BR practice was).
76017 - On loan from the Mid Hants Railway for the season.
Kent is a pretty enough county but there’s no real drama to the scenery from the railway, just flattish fields and drainage ditches. The only exceptional sight is Bodiam Castle.
I’m not sure why but we had a bit of a delay on the return trip while they watered up the engine so we were about 15 minutes late back. I wasn’t at my best so the first thing I did was nip down to the car and fetch the scooter to make looking around easier. There’s a bit to see at the station with a reasonable gift shop, a decent tea room and even a model railway room (although the main exhibit is more a toy railway for kids rather than a a model). The tea room provided lunch (Egg Mayo and Ham Hock sandwiches) then I wandered over the crossing to the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum.
Stephens holds a unique place in railway history as an engineer, advocate and promoter of light railways of various gauges. He held varies resident or chief engineer positions over the years, including for the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland railways at a time when rising competition and outdated working practices nearly put them out of business - had Stephens not managed to keep them open and promote tourism they may not exist today.
Typical railway museum display!
He was a big fan of using technology to benefit the railways including trying to develop a compression ignition diesel engined railcar many years before such a thing was actually introduce; the internal combustion engine technology in the very early 1900s simply wasn’t sufficiently advanced so steam continued to prevail. He did eventually manage to procure some petrol engine Ford truck chassis which were converted into railcars, being single ended they would run in pairs back-to-back and were quite successful.
They’ve even squeezed a loco in.
I did make one purchase from the gift shop but that’ll be a story for another time and place! The drive from there to Hythe was mainly B Roads so a bit twisty-turny, after a pint of decent cider I checked in and I’m now on the 4th Floor of the Imperial Hotel. It’s a bit better than a Premier Inn, and actually not that much more expensive, they even phoned me earlier to check if I wanted a dinner booking for the restaurant (I declined and had a bar meal).
My room is at the back, on the 4th floor in the old servants quarters!
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