Rother Valley Railway

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since January 2007.

The ‘Missing Link’ between Robertsbridge, a mainline station on the Tonbridge Hastings line and the Kent and East Sussex Railway, a preservation railway at Bodiam. A society of volunteers is attempting to re-establish the railway link. To date the society has managed, from the Robertsbridge end, to establish several hundred yards of line eastwards together with a platform, although no trains are currently running for the general public.

The Kent & East Sussex Railway Preservation Society was formed in 1961 following closure of the line.

After many trials and tribulations, the Tenterden Railway Company Limited was incorporated in 1971 as a Company limited by Guarantee and in 1973 was successful in purchasing that part of the line between Tenterden and Bodiam. The Tenterden Railway Company is now known as The Kent & East Sussex Railway, as of January 2004. The preservationists were refused permission by the then Transport Minister Barbara Castle to take over the section between Bodiam and Robertsbridge, despite taking the Minister to the High Court. The latter section was lifted and became abandoned. Trains first ran again on the Kent & East Sussex Railway on the 3 February 1974 between Tenterden to Rolvenden, the line gradually being restored and extended in stages, reaching Wittersham Road in 1977, Northiam in 1990 and finally Bodiam on the 2 April 2000, exactly 100 years to the day since the original opening of the line to passengers. The Tenterden Railway Company has powers under its Memorandum and Articles of Association to operate the Railway between Tenterden and Robertsbridge, but has no current plans to extend beyond Bodiam.

A separate Company, the Rother Valley Railway (East Sussex) Ltd, was formed on the 22 May 1991 with the approval of the TRC to reconstruct the railway between Bodiam and Robertsbridge and has since simplified its name to Rother Valley Railway Ltd.

The Rother Valley Railway proposes to restore the missing rail link between Bodiam and Robertsbridge. This is approxiamately a 3 1/2 mile long section. There will be an end on link with the Kent and East Sussex at Bodiam enabling through running. Trains will initially run into our own station at Robertsbridge, but our ultimate aim is once again to run KESR trains into the bay platform, which still exists as an engineers siding.

Since 1991, the railway has been acquiring parts of the trackbed as and when possible. Negotiations continue with the remaining landowners to secure the remainder of the route. In addition the Railway is liasing with the various authorities to ensure that the necessary planning consents and orders will be granted. There are several bridges to reconstruct and three road crossings to be reinstated including the A21 Robertsbridge by-pass, which was the original stumbling block and major reason which prevented the acquisition of the section back in the 1960’s. Since that time however official attitudes have moderated and the Railway is convinced that as time approaches, assistance and permissions will be granted.

Unfortunately, progress has been extremely slow. The rebirth of the railway has suffered immeasurably from a lack of proactive and timely management - with an unwillingness from most of the non elected directors to introduce fully democratic and accountable practices into the organisation - leaving the volunteers very disenfranchised, demoralised and not being provided with the tools or materials needed to continue. Additionally, legal issues are not being resolved. The result of this has left the project in a moribund state - when measured against progress at other heritage lines around the UK it is clear that the existing structure has had an injurious impact on progress and a 'clean slate' is needed to push this valuable and much desired project to fruition as completion is now overdue.