It’s one of those railways that’s difficult to categorise, at 15” gauge it falls on the boundary between miniature and narrow gauge and although it’s very nearly 100 years old it’s always been a tourist line. I’d opt for it being a Miniature Tourist Railway, partly because the locos are all scale replicas rather than built to a gauge.
From the hotel I ran along the seafront then back through the main street as I had a little bit of shopping to do. The sea front is slightly odd as it’s not really touristy, it’s just a beach and a road with houses and flats.
The working end of the beach.
From the town I cut back down to the Royal Military Canal which, along with the adjacent Royal Military Road, formed a major defensive line covering around 28 miles off vulnerable coastline bordering Romney Marsh. It was completed in 1809 and was dug by hand with the spoil being used to build a parapet on the landward side. Today you can boat on parts of it and there’s a long distance path running the full length.
One of the bridges over the canal.
By the time I’d reached the Railway I’d just missed a train, which didn’t matter, it gave me time to sort the ticket out and have a coffee. I was assured it was going to be quiet and the scooter wouldn’t be a problem, in the end it was a lot busier than anticipated but we managed!
Sir Winston Churchill
It’s very much a railway in two parts, The run from Hythe to New Romney (the original railway) and on to Romney Sands is flat fields interspersed with villages and small towns, then you come out onto Dungeness where it’s shingle; the view from there is dominated by the power station (it’s just as bad sailing round the coast there - you can see the blooming thing for hours!) You get the feeling the trains are going much faster than they are, but that might be down to size and the fact you are only a few inches above the track bed (and can leave the sliding doors open).
My original plan had been to alight at Dungeness but I decided to stay on the train back to New Romney instead. A group of volunteers were giving the station a good clean up, one of them lost track of time when her phone connected to a French service and the clock was an hour out! New Romney is the railway’s main base so I had a look round and some lunch. They do have a model railway display but it’s upstairs and I couldn’t be bothered.
The train back to Hythe was almost full but with a bit of juggling we managed to get the scooter and me into one of the wheelchair compartments (along with a couple of baby buggies). I decided to scoot back through the town and then made a bit of an error, I assumed there’d be a road down to the beach from the one I was on, there was but a lot further on than I’d thought! Once I was able to cut down a lane and across the canal it was a warm run for the mile or so back to the hotel. If there’d been any shade I’d have grabbed an ice cream from the van parked opposite the hotel but instead I dropped the scooter back to the car and had a pint of cold cider.
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