‘THE BRANCH’ – THE KENT COAST RAILWAY COMPANY
After many vicissitudes, mainly financial, the East Kent Railway had opened between Chatham and Faversham on 25th January 1858 and crossed the Medway into the South Eastern Railway station at Strood two months later. With extensions authorised into both London and Dover, despite best efforts by the SER to prevent them, in 1859 the East Kent metamorphosised into the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. By virtue of running powers west of Bickley over the MidKent Railway and the West End of London & Crystal Palace Railway the Chatham got into the Brighton side of London’s Victoria station on 3rd December 1860. Faversham to Canterbury had opened five months earlier but it was not until 22nd July 1861 that the company finally reached Dover.
The South Eastern had been in the Channel port for nearly seventeen years and established itself in Thanet with lines down the Stour Valley from Ashford to Canterbury, and on to Ramsgate by 13th April 1846. By the end of that year the SER had crossed the peninsular from Ramsgate to Margate, making a distance from London Bridge via Redhill of roundly 100 miles. But with the East Kent Railway building and the shorter route into the capital from Rochester authorised, the Herne Bay & Faversham Railway, promoted by local landowners and influential businessmen, obtained its powers in 1857. Inevitably the South Eastern, which ran a connecting coach service between Herne Bay and Minster, fought this Bill ferociously.
The Herne Bay route opened to Whitstable on 1st August 1860 by which time authority had been received for a continuation to Margate, causing a renaming of the whole undertaking to ‘The Margate Railway’. Meanwhile the LCDR had agreed to work and lease the line, which opened to Herne Bay on 13th July 1861, powers for onward extension to Ramsgate already having been received. That section opened on 5th October 1863 and in the meantime track had been doubled throughout from Faversham. The Chatham acquired the whole route in 1873. The name had changed again in 1861, to ‘The Kent Coast Railway’, this persisting for some time though locally it became more generally known simply as ‘The Branch’. Electrification of the line was approved under the Kent Coast Scheme in February 1956. Trial running began on 1st June 1959, the full public service beginning two weeks later.
Faversham dates from pre-Roman times, being set on an inlet from The Swale, a stretch of tidal water separated from the Thames Estuary by the Isle of Sheppey (It also happens to be the burial place of King Stephen (10921154) and his queen, Matilda). It stood a little north of the Roman Watling Street, now the A2. The Saxons retained and maintained the town as an important centre and by the Middle Ages it had become an established seaport, a key element in its manufacture of gunpowder and other explosives. Charcoal could be burnt from locally-grown timber but The Swale assisted the import of sulphur and potassium nitrate (saltpetre), the water also being crucial for exporting the output.
By the middle of the
