Steaming Ahead

It’s not just Her Majesty The Queen who has reached a milestone birthday recently; the opening of the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway took place 90 years ago this year and Kent is celebrating its miniature hero.

- Jack Watkins

WHEN the Dungeness section of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (RH&DR) reopened after the Second World War in 1947, Laurel and Hardy were on hand to sprinkle a little Hollywood star dust on the proceedings.

How fitting that the western world’s best-loved, most recognisable comedy duo should cut the ribbon for its most celebrated miniature railway. A movietone news clip of the occasion is available on YouTube, and the humour this unsurpassable double act managed to extract from the event, to the delight of the gathered crowd, still works its magic 70 years later.

This summer the railway celebrates the 90th anniversary of its opening, and it is still going strong. Along with a special anniversary event on 15-16 June, Andy Nash, historian of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway Association Heritage Group, is currently working on a commemorative book Romney Then And Now, with fellow group members Steve Town and Tim Godden. 

The initial idea for the railway was the brainchild of a couple of millionaire racing driver friends, Count Louis Zborowski and Captain ‘Jack’ Howey.

Zborowski had already built a narrow-gaugerailway circuit on his estate near Canterbury, where he raced his Chitty Bang Bang cars, but in 1924, he was tragically killed driving a Mercedes in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, aged just 29.

Although the count had already placed orders for a couple of locomotives to be specially designed for the anticipated new railway, a site had not yet been found.