All looking rather gloomy and unloved, the goods shed, crane and station building opposite the Crown Hotel. The railway lasted eighty years, while the Crown just about made its centenary before it too, was closed and pulled down. June Ingram “…there was a long bus strike in the late 1950s and I was at the Tech ...
Reference: WH0178
An afternoon train photographed at Brasted station on the last day of services, October 28th 1961. Adorned with a Union Jack, someone had chalked on the boiler plate door “Farewell to the Flyer 1881 – 1961” the Westerham Valley Railway, come and gone in only eighty years…
Reference: WH0154
Looking south-west across Dunton Green station carpark shows the overgrown track-bed of the branch-line curving away to the west in the direction of Chevening Halt, Brasted and Westerham.
Reference: WH0152
On October 30th 2011 the Spa Valley Railway simulated the final days of the Westerham Valley Railway to commemorate 50 years since the closure of the branch line. Here a train of four coaches recreates the final day of services, Saturday October 28th 1961 appearing to chuff its way past Chevening Halt heading for Brasted. ...
Reference: WH0153
The 1920s were relatively hard times due to national recovery being slow after the First World War and annual holidays had not really become established for poorer workers, so a day’s outing to the seaside was a rare treat and all that some workers with large families could afford. “Jolly Boys” charabanc trips were usually ...
Reference: WH0157
With the formation of the South Eastern & Chatham Railway Management Committee in 1899, travelling conditions for passengers began to improve on the Westerham branch line. There were new locomotives in lined Brunswick green and new six-wheeled carriages as well. The elderly Cudworth engines previously used on the branch were replaced with James Stirling’s class ...
Reference: WH0167
Another “Jolly Boys” outing waits outside Hookers ‘Herald Steam Printing Works’ in a charabanc packed to the gunwales. The term “Jolly Boys” comes from the description given to a series of drinking vessels grouped together and joined by tubes. With a couple of barrels of ‘bright beer’ tucked away in the back, ’nuff said…
Reference: WH0155
The same location, probably the same time, but different charabanc and different guys. At a guess, this might have been a conglomeration of working men from the Brewery, the Men’s Club and the Printing Works…
Reference: WH0156
Another group assembled with the radiator of a charabanc lurking just in the right hand side of frame. Everyone is sporting a rather large button-hole, so it’s some kind of celebration, but what…?
Reference: WH0169
Several large employers would give their workers an annual summer outing, by rail or coach, often to the sea-side. Here we see workers and their families from Westerham Nursery en-route to Margate in the 1950s.
Reference: WH0166