‘H’ CLASS TANKS… HANDY AND HARDY

I hail from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where I was born in March 1944. Our town still has two railway stations if High Brooms is included. Tunbridge Wells Central is exSouth Eastern Railway, later, SECR. The West station was LBSCR and the engine shed is now the headquarters for the Spa Valley Railway. It finally closed in July 1985 with the withdrawal of the Tonbridge-Eridge shuttle. The grandiose station building survives as a restaurant and the rest of the site is occupied by Sainsbury’s. I live a stone’s throw away from here and the noise of a steam engine at weekends evokes many happy memories from a misspent childhood.

There was a single-line connection between the two stations at Grove Junction on the Tunbridge-Hastings line. It was here that Gerard Fiennes, later General Manager of the Eastern Region – who wrote his famous, or infamous, book, depending on your opinion, (Ian Allan, 1968) – lost his phobia for train travel. In my era