Events

Where does the time go? The Easter holidays seem to rush by, then it was the gala and this week is 40s.
Our gala was absolutely fantastic with record numbers coming here to see and enjoy travelling behind “City of Truro”. What a fantastic loco it is, and what a great weekend we had. Our staff all enjoy our annual gala and it is a great opportunity to see a guest loco, fright trains etc. This year our own little star was Marcia, in steam and carrying passengers for the first time for many years. Marcia hauled a brake van in the Pullman dock at Tenterden so many folk were able to get up close and personal with the little locomotive.
There was one downside to the event, when at just after 5.30pm a car drove into our crossing gates at Cranbrook Road. This resulted in delays of around 40 minutes at the end of the day. Fortunately nobody was hurt. We will have some disruption, albeit not to the timetable, for a few weeks until new gates are fixed. As usual our staff were fantastic, swinging into pre-determined actions to deal with the incident. We get very few incidents here and it is good to know that everything that should happen does, in the right order.

I do find it ironic that the editor of a railway magazine rang me up for the first time in 6 years to find out not about our successes but to get the low down on the incident. He had heard the driver of the car was a 19 year old, so his pre-determined opinions were scotched when I told him it was a 90 year old!. Why do the press always seek out bad stories when there are so many good ones to tell? The Royal Wedding was a great good news story, so perhaps that is one too many in a week!

This weekend we will have our 40s event and we are expecting record numbers for this too, with our Battle of Britain Memorial Flight display on Saturday. We are taking the unusual step of charging for our car park at Tenterden (free to ticket holders and members). We usually get invaded by local shoppers looking for free parking so they will have a bit of a surprise, but the £5 charge will be refunded against ticket purchases from the booking office. We have new attractions on site so be sure to visit our 40s event webpage http://www.kesr.org.uk/special-events/details/82-1940s-weekend.html for more information.

Last week I went to neighbouring steam railway, the Spa Valley to enjoy a trip down to Eridge on their newly extended railway. They have restored their platform at Eridge immaculately to heritage Southern Region standards and yet just a few yards away we have the network livery on the main line platform. Unusually we were sat on the Spa Valley train immediately next to the main line service trains. I am very interested in how many extra visitors they will get, because it will be relevant to our forecasting for the eventual extension of this railway to Robertsbridge.

Plans for June 11th are progressing well. I have seen the printer's draft of Nick Pallant’s book “Rails Across The Rother” which tells the story of 50 years of preservation of the K&ESR. I am particularly interested in the new bits of history like the Terrier Gala, Tour de France day and re-opening to Junction Rd. Once printed the book will be available to purchase via our on-line shop. It is inexpensive and worth a read.