The Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway is quite literally a millionaires playground. The railway served no real purpose at its inception in 1924. It was the leisure pursuit of two very wealthy men who both had a shared passion for miniature railways and wanted their own to play ‘trains’ on. The first train ran along the line between Hythe and New Romney in 1927, serving day-goers and tourists who arrived at the two termini. The railway played a significant part later in it’s life during the second world war where it was used for freight work and also saw the world’s only armoured miniature train patrol the coast for any sign of an invasion by the Germans. Aside from this, the line has no significant history. It wasn’t a commuter line or a freight line. It was simply a pleasure line.
Today, the railway has expanded from New Romney all the way up to Dungeness. It’s a 10.5 mile journey from Hythe which starts behind a row houses with nothing remarkable in sight, not unless you enjoy peeking into peoples gardens and getting inspiration for your own and lets face it, who hasn’t done that. Before you know it, the line opens up and the landscape utterly transforms and the journey is simply breathtaking, especially on a fabulous day as this.
Between Hythe and New Romney, there is a double set of track laid which allows for multiple services to run at a time and in both directions. From New Romney up to Dungeness, it’s single track and a token exchange system (the same as in heritage lines) is in operation. Most trains will need to stop at Romney Sands which is the station after New Romney to wait for the train coming back from Dungeness in order to exchange tokens. This presents an excellent opportunity to view the other trains pulling in, some of which from the day are shown below. Romney Sands is also a Parkdean resort so lots of day-trippers get on and off here.
The stretch between Romney Sands and Dungeness is without a doubt the highlight on the trip. The train crosses over a shingle peninsular with a few shacks dotted about. Once you’re done looking at those, you see the old lighthouse come into view which is eclipsed by the nuclear plant next to it.
The old lighthouse has since been replaced by the new, slimmer, automatic lighthouse (pictured below). The new lighthouse is not open to the public but the old lighthouse is and on a day like today, the views were incredible. Below you get a sense of how large the single track loop is that comes into Dungeness station. The old lighthouse was a manual manned lighthouse and I do not envy whoever had to drag themselves up and down all those steps multiple times a day.
The power station here is non-operational and is in the process of being decommissioned after ~45 years of service, however when the power station was built in 1960, it was actually this event which caused the decommissioning of the lighthouse since the construction of the power plant actually blocked a significant portion of the light from it. A new, automatic lighthouse was therefore built to replace it. After I had finished exploring the lighthouse, I headed back to the station to catch the next service coming into the station which I caught back to New Romney.
New Romney is the main headquarters of the railway where the depot and sheds are. It’s also a great place to alight, grab a bite to eat and watch the trains coming and going in both directions. This is also where trains will switch over on various services to add variety to the day for those who stay on the same train all day long. Every day when services run, different trains run so the chances that you get the same combination of trains running on the same day is highly unlikely.
