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Hawkhurst Branch by Brian Hart w/ dust jacket British
Hawkhurst Branch by Brian Hart
Hard cover with dust jacket
252 pages
Copyright 2000
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
THE WEALTH OF THE WEALD ..
Chapter Two
THE CRANBROOK & PADDOCK WOOD RAILWAY
Chapter Three
BUILDING THE BRANCH
Chapter Four
EXTENDING THE LINE
Chapter Five
PROSPEROUS TIMES
Chapter Six
SUNNY SOUTH DAYS
Chapter Seven
LAND OF LOST CONTENT
Chapter Eight
THE HOP-PICKERS' TALE
Chapter Nine
SWANSONG..
Appendices
Southern Railway Locomotive Workings ..
Distance Diagram
Gradient Profile
Track Plans ..
Signalling Plans
Building Drawings ..
Acknowledgements ..
The Hawkhurst branch line meandered through some of the most outstanding countryside in Kent, a locality famous for hilltop villages, hop gardens and deeply-wooded landscapes. To the villagers, farmers, hop-growers and tradesmen along the way, its value was indisputable, but for many the line is most remembered for the role it played during the hop-picking season when hundreds of London families travelled down on their annual working holiday into the 'Fair Land of Kent'.
During the forty years which have since elapsed, this much-lamented, lost Southern byway has often been the subject of pictorial books. However, until now no comprehensive history has ever been written. This highly-absorbing account is sympathetically and passionately conveyed in the author's established style, whilst two-thirds of the illustrations have never before been published.
Brian Hart is already well-known for having written a number of acclaimed histories of the lost branch lines of Kent, such as the Canterbury & Whitstable, Elham Valley, Hythe & Sandgate, Sheppey Light, and Hundred of Hoo railways. With The Hawkhurst Branch he has achieved not only a journey of sheer delight through a most glorious tract of South East England, but a precious glimpse of an age that no one believed could have so quickly just simply faded away.
INTRODUCTION
AMONG the many and varied branch lines of the former South Eastern Railway, none was more characterful than the single track that penetrated the High Weald to Hawkhurst. One of the last to be constructed under the 'old order' during the final bout of fierce competition between the SER and LC&DR, its arrival on the railway map of Southern England was well overdue since plans had been put forward for a line to Cranbrook as early as the middle of the nineteenth century. The long struggle, which lasted forty years, is dealt with in the opening chapters where the intriguing story of events, both locally and on a wider scale, unfolds. It might be assumed that had the SER chairman's hostility towards the scheme prevailed, then this loveliest of single-track railways might never have been built. Certainly after 1900, or even perhaps 1895, its merits would have been insufficient to justify construction in a rapidly changing world. The eventual working union that saw the creation of the SE&CR at the turn of the century, as well as the passing of the Light Railways Act of 1897 would have likely eclipsed its attraction. In purely conjectural terms, the entire area may well have been left instead to the engineers of light railways, with branches being built from Tenterden to Ashford, Cranbrook and Tonbridge.
The line was unique in many respects, not only being controlled by Tyer's electric tablet system, but more noticeably for the signalling installed throughout by Messrs McKenzie & Holland. It is noteworthy that many of these signals, unfamiliar in the south, with their highly elaborate M&H cast-iron finials, lasted for many years, a few even into BR days. The stations, too, were quite unlike any others seen on the Southern, with distinctively gabled red-brick dwellings for the station masters. The corrugated-iron office buildings were also unusual for the SER which traditionally used weather boarding and only on the northern section of the
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