East Kent Light Railway
The East Kent Light Railway was part of the Colonel Stephens group of cheaply built rural light railways in England. Holman Fred Stephens was engineer from its inception, subsequently becoming director and manager. The line ran from Shepherdswell to Wingham (Canterbury Road) Station with a branch from Eastry through Poison Cross to Richborough Port. Built primarily for colliery traffic within the Kent Coalfields, the line was built with many spurs and branches to serve the mines, with cancelled plans to construct extensions to several others. The success of Tilmanstone colliery allowed the main line of the railway to continue operation until 1986. A remainder of the line became the East Kent Railway, a heritage railway, in 1987. History Pre WW1 The East Kent Light Railways (official title) was originally conceived before the First World War as a network of lines in East Kent linking at least nine proposed collieries in the newly discovered Kent coalfield to a new coal port at Richborough Port. In order to exploit the coal measures under the rural Kent countryside collierries needed to be built and then shafts sunk, and the use of the rural roads to achieve this caused great damage, so the railways