ronstrutt

Fantastic developments in my absence, Adrian. I hope that you, Mrs W.S, and all other posters had a good Christmas and are all set up for the New Year. However, I am sad to have to tell you that you will no doubt be spending your New Year availing yourself of the services of Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Run for breach of patent, I refer to page 58 of the January issue of M.... R... which contains an article on the use of coffee stirrers for railway modelling! At the very least, I suggest that a stiff letter to the editor is called for, especially as the perpetrator admitted to stealing them from his staff canteen.

Just received Hornby's latest email, referring to this: http://www.Hornby.com/uk-en/news/the-engine-shed/2017-announcement-the-wainwright-h-class/ Whoopee!

I'm sad that you plan to finish at Waterloo East. I had hoped that you might reopen the link from there to Waterloo: Once across Waterloo concourse, the world's your oyster. of course. Otherwise, you'll only have the Thames to cross and Charing Cross as an option.

Maybe the Annetts Lock on the ground frame was playing up.

Sadly I had to postpone the photographic trip. The M25 was in a particularly bad state yesterday afternoon and I didn't want to risk it getting worse. Unfortunately I'm finding driving tiring enough at the moment without coping with traffic jams.

Thank you for the warning. Noted! It looks as bad as Combe Bank Cutting used to be.

I'm about to drive back from Reigate to Norfolk, with a diversion to Westerham for an all stations trip to Dunton Green taking photographs of the line as it is today. I'm also going to try to walk along the surviving stretch between Westerham and the motorway with the permission of the landowner. The good news is that a contract for my book about the line is about to be signed. The sad news is that it will only cover the closure and preservation periods. I'd been happily writing away and discovered that I was heading towards a 200,000 word epic. That would, unfortunately, have pushed the book into a price bracket that would have severely limited its sales, to the point of being uneconomic. Having said that, though, the 1950-65 period is probably the most interesting in the line's history though it probably won't appeal much to those who want to know which engine worked the 2.43 on Easter Sunday 1945. But for those who want to know how and why lines such as Westerham were closed and why the preservation scheme failed, it will be an eye-opener. It will come with a CD-ROM which will include reproductions of the important BR and Ministry of Transport documents of the period. My work on the earlier period won't be wasted though - there's at least a couple of magazine articles to be had from it and I am also thinking of producing a strictly-limited edition of the complete thing for Kent Libraries and the National Railway Museum so that future researchers will have access to it.

Another batch of newspapers has been added to the British Newspaper Archive, including the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser. From them, this gem dated 5th August 1892: A capital idea has been carried out in reference to the coming Primrose League fete to be held at Chevening. Of course the Westerham railway line carries one either way to Brasted or Dunton Green, both stations being a few miles from the place of fete. A temporary platform however will be erected at Chipstead bridge, and for the convenience of Westerham and Brasted members of the Chevening habitation, the trains will stop at this platform, enabling them to be placed close by the field. This temporary platform was, of course, on the site of Chevening Halt. I wonder if it was ever removed before being formally opened in 1906.

Ah, Forsinard - a delightful spot! There is almost no habitation in sight from its platforms but always a fair degree of custom. When I was responsible for testing a new generation of railway ticketing systems, Forsinard was my station of choice for making sure that they could deal with almost anything a ticket clerk could throw at them.

The first Grain Crossing Halt looks exactly as I would have imagined the original Chevening Halt to have been. And they were built in the same year when railmotor services were introduced. I cannot find a date for when Grain Crossing Halt was rebuilt in concrete but the picture clearly shows that the design of its hut was different to that at Chevening.

You are quite right that the two shelters do seem to be identical, suggesting that it was not replaced when the halt was rebuilt. Sadly pictures of the original halt are few and far between. There is, of course a third possibility. I cannot believe that Chevening would have had a concrete shelter when it was built in 1906. Concrete was in its infancy then and, in any case, the emphasis on the halts was cheapness, not permanence. The railway wanted to find out it it would be used before spending too much money. Sandhurst Halt, built around the same time, had wooden buildings and I would have expected Chevening to be the same. However, judging by my garden sheds, cheaply erected wooden buildings don't have an infinite life and I wonder if Chevening's original hut had to be replaced in the 1930s or 40s. By that stage concrete was in vogue. If my theory is right, when the halt was rebuilt, the hut would still have been perfectly serviceable and it would probably have been put up on a concrete raft. Just a thought.

Given that the land falls away there - the station approach rises quite steeply - and from the rounded shape of their outer ends, I would say that they are spurs. They are shown. though not so distinctly, on the 1895 Six-inch map, so they would seem to date from the building of the line. I wonder whether they were formed from the spoil produced when some of the cutting slopes had to be eased during the final stages of building the line to help prevent slips - or material from the slips themselves.

Just to let all and sundry know that the National Library of Scotland has begun digitising a new series of very large scale OS maps. At the moment only the Edinburgh and London areas are covered but 'London' stretches out as far as Westerham. They were all surveyed around 1960-63. http://maps.nls.uk/view/103196986- Westerham http://maps.nls.uk/view/103197289- Brasted http://maps.nls.uk/view/103197592- Chevening http://maps.nls.uk/view/103197895- Dunton Green Incidentally, does anyone know what the three 'spurs' of raised ground running south-west away from Brasted goods yard are? Were they intended for extensions to the sidings or were they simply a handy way of disposing of surplus soil from cutting excavations? I assume they're still there.

He was definitely a vocal supporter. As far as financial backer is concerned, the modern sense of the word 'backer' would suggest that he put up a very large percentage of the money, which he didn't. He contributed, yes (the equivalent of £100,000 from him and the same from his son-in-law wasn't exactly chickenfeed), but no more than a number of other people. As you say, as a local businessman he had no real alternative. That whole episode is fascinating because there was clearly a strong feeling in Westerham against the idea of a railway. Its supporters were largely those who'd bought or had come into large estates which they realised would increase massively in value if a railway made it possible to develop them. Other people didn't want Westerham turned into another Croydon. There are probably many people in Westerham today who would agree with them!

Richard Durtnell bought 10 of the £10 shares, to which he later added his son-in-law's 10 shares. This compares to William Tipping and Charles Warde, who each took 50, and Charles Thompson, the town's doctor, who took 20. In total, the company only ever sold 419 shares, raising around £4,000 out of the total £70,000 that the line cost to build (roughly equivalent to £50 million today). In terms of wealth, £10 is worth about £10,000 today. Much the same happened when they tried to buy the line off BR for preservation.