A visit today to the Romney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway depot in New Romney, Kent.
This venture - featuring one-third scale live steam locomotives - was built in the 1920s and was the brainchild of Count Louis Zborowski - an aristocratic racing driver and train enthusiast whose colourful life later inspired Ian Fleming to write the children's book "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (then made into a musical film, and more recently, a musical theatre production).
Zborowski teamed up with fellow car and train enthusiast Captain J Howey (who happened to be a millionaire landowner) to take the ideas he had tested at his Higham estate, near Canterbury, and build a 14 mile live steam working railway along the Kent coast between Hythe and Dymchurch. The railway now operates as a tourist attraction in its own right.
I have a few more shots from this trip which I'll drop in over the next few days.
@onewing Babs, not this time. We did bring the kids here when they were younger. Interestingly, in spite of it NOT being holiday time, the train was fairly full of fare paying adults!
Beautiful machines, beautifully decorated. I can just about remember the excitement of walking over the bridge on the way to school when a steam train went underneath. We'd run from one side to the other as it passed underneath. Luckily hardly anybody had cars then so we didn't get run over.
