Following a number of proposals to link London and Dover, the South Eastern Railway received the necessary authority in 1836. The route left the London & Croydon Railway - sanctioned on 5th June 1835 - at Penge to head south and climb the dip slope of the North Downs above the Caterham Valley before entering the Eden Valley at Chiddingstone and heading east.
The London & Croydon Railway opened four years to the day after authorisation while, in the meantime, several protagonists of whom, oddly, the SER was one, had vied to build a London to Brighton railway. The route ultimately selected from the several presented - not the SER one! - left the London & Croydon at a point three-quarters of mile south of Norwood Junction. The Brighton received assent on 15th July 1837 but someone in Government then concluded there would never be enough traffic offering to support two separate and near-parallel routes heading south together for nearly seven miles before the SER veered away. Thus Parliament decided the two companies should share the L&BR route to a point ‘north of Earlswood Common’ before the SER turned east. The SER’s objections to this imposition were no less vociferous than those of the Brighton. After some wrangling with a few ‘carrots’ offered, the companies were ‘persuaded’ to accept the change. To that end the SER paid half the estimated cost to the Brighton which did the work, a sum of £327,334. But in 1839 Parliament stepped in again. Now the two parties were told ownership of the eleven ‘shared’ miles would instead be split into two equal halves. Neither company could see any good reason for this but the Brighton made the strongest objections. Not only did the South Eastern gain possession of the more expensive southern half through the Downs between Coulsdon and Redhill, it also obtained control of the junction there, something that was to have repercussions right up until grouping in 1923.
The London & Brighton Railway opened between Norwood and Haywards Heath on 12th July 1841 and to Brighton two months later. The South Eastern, having been diverted by another tempting route to Dover which left it free of the Brighton but raised howls of opposition, got from 'Reigate Junction’ (later Redhill) to Tonbridge on 26th May 1842 and opened through to Dover on 7th February 1844. Seven months later the company opened a line down the Medway Valley to Maidstone from a junction at Paddock Wood.
In 1845, perhaps realising how matters were developing, the Thames & Medway Canal Company laid a single line of rails alongside the water between Gravesend and Strood, in the course of this making use of the towpath in the 2¼ miles of tunnels east of Higham. Soon afterwards the South Eastern purchased the canal company, filling in the canal bed in the tunnels and doubling the track throughout the route by 23rd August 1847. (Parts of the canal are still visible from the railway.) Two years later the SER opened its North Kent line between London Bridge and Gravesend via Lewisham, Woolwich and Dartford.
At the 1849 General Meeting the SER shareholders were confidently told that “…the Company holds a natural position for handling land traffic between Europe and Great Britain and cannot be dispossessed of it’. The nascent East Kent Railway had other ideas. Following proposals first made in January 1850, that company owed its existence to the efforts of the indefatigable Thomas Crampton, himself a Man of Kent from Broadstairs, who also engineered the original EKR route and much else east of the Medway. Its authorisation at first permitted a line between Strood and Canterbury, in both instances having running powers into the South Eastern stations at those extremities. The Cathedral City had been reached by a line down the Stour Valley from Ashford on 6th February 1846. Ever having the greatest difficulty in raising funds, the EKR did not manage to open the first eighteen miles of route, from Rochester to Faversham, until 29th March 1858, the bridge over the River Medway into Strood not being completed for another two months. The
