Photograph showing a steam train at Westerham on the now closed
Westerham Valley railway.
31530 - One of the line's customery H Class push-pull engines
standing alongside the water crane at Westerham station. This engine was
engine was stabled in the Westerham engine shed each night from
Feb 1961 to when the line closed in the same year.
In railway terms the town of Westerham, just inside the
western border of Kent, was in a somewhat unfortunate
location. As a result of its position at the foot of the
North Downs it was served only by a branch of the former
South Eastern Railway and by the mid-1950s, its lack of
fast, direct rail services meant that buses and coaches
were usually favoured for local journeys to places such
as Sevenoaks. The town did still generate a reasonable
amount of commuter traffic, with the peak-time branch trains
connecting with main line trains at Dunton Green station,
but at off-peak periods the railway was only sparsely used.
The bottom line was that the branch was losing 11,600 pounds
per annum.
BR addressed this situation in the autumn of 1955 by
withdrawing the offpeak services, thereby leaving only the
commuter services, and by introducing 'one engine in steam'
working. It was hoped that these economies would keep the
branch viable until the time when electric or diesel trains
could be introduced.
Photograph taken by Derek Potton and suplied by the Transport Treasury
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