Talk:South Eastern Railway (England)

Second stations
Is it correct that Maidstone and Canterbury have lost their second station? Surely Canterbury still has two and Maidstone three? rossb 15:00, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

no - what this article should say is that with the advent of the SECR the towns and cites with multiple stations needed sorting out. Gravesend, Rochester (not Chatham), Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Ashford, Whitstable, Canterbury, the isle of Thanet, Dover, (St Mary Cray junction ?), etc all have multiple stations - some of which (eg Thanet, Ashford, ?) were correct by SECR, while others weren't and subsequently closed (whitastable, Gravesend, ?) and some remain (Canterbury, Maidstone, ?) --160.5.247.213 20:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

CWR - spacebar
Sorry to be terribly nit-picking, but this material is so well crafted it seems a shame not to fix the number of cases where your spacebar seems not to have worked, after full-stops and commas.

What motivated the edit was the section about the variety of means of traction. In the end I found there weren't any grammatical errors, but at first I felt there was an error there somewhere. It's perfectly correct, but it "threw" me. Perhaps it would be smoother if parentheses replaced the two hypens (before "built" and after "1839") ? --Edetic 05:27, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Do whatever needs to be done mate, as they say "be bold" - I'm illiterate when it comes to grammar (i didn't write this article) Pickle 07:29, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Revision suggested
The South Eastern Railway Company was originally proposed in 1836 to build a line from Dover to Reigate, where it would share the Brighton line into London via Croydon, running into London Bridge station which was owned by the London and Greenwich. It would seem then that some of this first paragraph is wrong since the London and Greenwich was a separate company and neither line initially ran anywhere near the Canterbury and Whitstable line. Does anybody mind if I do a rewrite and tidy on this? Chevin 14:45, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Please have a go and rewrite to list the Main line (SEML - ie redhill to dover) as coming first, but then put notes about later aquisition of london and greenwich and crab and winkle. IIRC this is an odl article thrown together not very coherintly ;) Pickle 22:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * OK I've got the info on its construction etc including Wishaw but am awaaiting a book for its later history. Chevin 08:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Begining and End
As far as I see the article does not give a date for the formation of the SER, nor a date for its passing (1923?). The sections about the companies which formed it go on and on with happenings that seem to be well after their lines were under the SER. A revision is needed.--SilasW (talk) 17:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * End - "5 August 1899", when it and the LCDR effectively merged (a joint management committee to get around various tax and other government impediments to rail industry consolidation prior to WW1) to make the SECR. Technically i guess the shareholders and company still existed until grouping, but passenger facing wise it disappeared in 1899. If i was really clever i would do some sort of rail succession box like most defunct and current TOC have. 91.111.74.139 (talk) 14:07, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A management committe was formed for the operations; however the SER and LCDR companies remained legally distinct, and the infrastructure remained owned by those two companies. New lines built after 1899 (such as the Chiselhurst loops and the new line in the Broadstairs/Ramsgate area) were built and owned by one or the other, but not by the SECR. The text of the Railways Act 1921 lists both the SER and LCDR as constituents of the group which became the Southern Railway. Hence the use of Category:Railway companies disestablished in 1899 is incorrect. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:02, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This article is so confusing.
See heading: This article is so confusing.

I'm trying to clean up the Southeast disambiguation page, in part to specify how THIS train company differs from the fourteen billion other train companies in the United Kingdom named with some form of "Southeastern", and I have pretty much no idea what to write about this one. It says "It was formed from these two other companies" but there seems to be nothing in the article about when or where this happened. It's just some stuff about the two former companies and then some stuff that apparently happened after they were merged. And the beginning says "was" so I assume this company no longer exists but I don't see anything in the article about when or where THAT happened, either.

There's obviously lots of information in this article, but it's pretty useless when you can't find or decipher the most basic information about the topic. One paragraph that says "It was formed in A when companies B and C merged due to cause D. It operated in such-and-such places in such-and-such ways. It ceased operations in E due to cause F." would be more helpful to the uninformed reader than all of the stuff that's here." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Propaniac (talk • contribs) 19:32, 14 September 2009
 * I've fixed up the entry in Southeast which was very wrong - it was a railway company not a train operator, and the two other companies listed were not constituents of the SER - one remained independent for as long as the SER did (ie until 1923) and the other was absorbed several years after the SER was created. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:14, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Great, but I think it would be a lot more helpful if you or someone else would fix up this article so that, for example, someone trying to summarize it for the Southeast disambiguation page would be able to figure out any basic information about this topic. I still don't get why this whatever-it-is was "formed in 1936" when the article says the LGR was formed in 1936, but if you say so, I certainly can't contradict you. Propaniac (talk) 13:42, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I mean, this is what the article says: "The company was formed from the London and Greenwich Railway (LGR) and the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway (CWR)." If that's not even accurate... God, I hate this article and wish someone would fix it. Propaniac (talk) 13:43, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't know where you get 1936 from.
 * I'm presently working on Reading Southern railway station which is how I came to South Eastern Railway (UK). I'll do a proper fix to this article some time. To summarise:
 * The South Eastern Railway was formed in 1836 to construct a route from London to Dover. Various other routes were opened over the years, during which time they absorbed several other railways, some of which were older; these included the Canterbury & Whitstable, purchased 1853. They also took over the working of some other railways (including the London & Greenwich) without actually absorbing them. In 1899 the SER entered into a working agreement with the London, Chatham and Dover Railway to share operation of the two railways, work them as a single system and pool receipts: but it was not a full amalgamation. Both the SER and LCDR remained separate companies until becoming constituents of the Southern Railway on 1 January 1923.
 * Now, if I slap that into the article it'll be struck as unreferenced (and rightly so) - even though it's all true. Let me gather my books. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I meant 1836, of course. I think that summary is very good and I appreciate it. While it's up to you, I think you should insert that into the article immediately as the new lead. It seems very indefensible to me that anyone who cared about the article would let it sit in such poor shape for months (probably years), completely ignore my comments about the drastic need for improvement, and then protest the insertion of a clear, comprehensible paragraph with no controversial statements. It's all basic information that should already be well-supported within the article (and now that I just checked, virtually nothing in there is referenced at this point anyway). Propaniac (talk) 14:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite and expand article
I propose to entirely rewrite and expand this article over the next few weeks. I have just cut out two large chunks of text on the London and Greenwich Railway and Canterbury and Whitstable Railway which do not appear to me to be directly relevant to the main article, and in any event the information is already given in their respective main articles. (It will of course be necessary to make some reference to these railways later in the SER article but not in this detail.) In case anyone is unhappy with this action, I have moved them below pro tem.--Das48 (talk) 10:46, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

London & Greenwich Railway
The LGR opened its first section, between Spa Road (Bermondsey) and Deptford, on 8 February 1836, the line being extended westwards to London Bridge on 14 December 1836, and eastwards to a temporary station at Greenwich on 14 December 1838. The present Greenwich station opened in 1840. This was the terminus until 1878, when the final cut-and-cover tunnel section between Greenwich and Maze Hill (beneath the grounds of the Queen's House and Greenwich Hospital - where the graveyard was excavated, remains being reinterred in East Greenwich Pleasaunce approximately 1 mi to the east) was opened, linking it to the North Kent Line just west of Charlton. The section between Charlton and Maze Hill opened in 1873, with Maze Hill functioning as a terminus until 1878. Westcombe Park railway station opened in 1879.

The layout of Greenwich station still partly betrays that fact. The line from London, built on a continuous viaduct, is perfectly straight, but after Greenwich it makes a sharp turn and dips into a tunnel. There also used to be a space between the two tracks for the locomotive 'escape route' to reverse the trains, but this disappeared when the station was reorganised to accommodate the Docklands Light Railway.

Canterbury & Whitstable Railway
The CWR (known locally as the Crab and Winkle Line, from its initials and fact that Whitstable was a fishing port) opened on 3 May 1830 between Canterbury and Whitstable Harbour, a distance of 6 mi. It was the first regular passenger steam railway in the world. It was built as part of a plan to improve the access of the city of Canterbury to the sea,and involved much work improving Whitstable harbour, engineered by Thomas Telford, which opened in 1832 and is still essentially intact. In its early days it employed a variety of means of traction: on the inclines at Tyler Hill and Clowes Wood winding engines were used, with horses on the section in between; and the locomotive Invicta - built by Robert Stephenson, unsuccessful and disused by 1839 - being employed at the Whitstable end. In spite of its short life, Invicta has been preserved.

The line included the world's first passenger train tunnel, the 800 yd Tyler Hill Tunnel, and both its portals are still visible. One entrance is behind the University of Kent, and the other in the grounds of the Archbishop's School. Until the 1970s it was possible to walk through it, but it became unsafe and collapsed shortly after, causing structural damage to the university buildings above.

Normal steam engines were introduced on this line in 1846 halving the journey time to 20 minutes. The engines had to be specially cut down in size in order to get through the tunnel, and the carriages were lower than normal.

The line closed to passenger traffic on 1 January 1931, and entirely in 1953. The site of the first Canterbury station was immediately to the east of Canterbury West station and for many years was used as a coal yard and goods station. Trains ran into a bay platform at the West station when that opened in 1846.

Text says railway reached Dover 1844, map caption says 1840
Hate to drop another straw onto this poor camel's back, but ... the article says service reached Dover "by" [sic] 7 February, 1844. The caption on the black-and-white map of SE England, illustrated in the article and appearing on this page as well, which likewise shows the line complete to Dover, says the map depicts things as of 1840. Which statement is wrong?

--Jim Luedke Jimlue (talk) 06:52, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Like many of the longer railways, the SER was not opened all at once, but in stages as each section was completed. According to:
 * opening of the SER was as follows:
 * Redhill - Tonbridge 26 May 1842
 * Tonbridge - Headcorn August 1842
 * Headcorn - Ashford 1 December 1842
 * Ashford - Folkestone (temporary terminus) 28 June 1843
 * Folkestone (temp) - Folkestone 18 December 1843
 * Folkestone - Dover Town 7 February 1844
 * The map in question is stated to be "From Whishaw, F, (1840) The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland: Practically described and illustrated London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co." but that book doesn't contain any maps that I can find. It does describe several railways that were under construction at the time of publication, but not yet open - among these are the South Eastern. So, if it is Whishaw's map, the most likely explanation is that it's a map not just of railways actually open, but also of railways under construction. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:13, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The map in question is stated to be "From Whishaw, F, (1840) The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland: Practically described and illustrated London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co." but that book doesn't contain any maps that I can find. It does describe several railways that were under construction at the time of publication, but not yet open - among these are the South Eastern. So, if it is Whishaw's map, the most likely explanation is that it's a map not just of railways actually open, but also of railways under construction. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:13, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Gravesend & Rochester Railway
The Gravesend railway station and Strood (1st) railway station articles both suggest that those stations (and presumably the connecting railway) were built by the Gravesend & Rochester Railway, however the only mention of that company in this article is the acquisition of some locomotives from it in 1847, and the Thames and Medway Canal article attributes the building of that stretch of railway to SER. Was GRR a predecessor that was acquired by SER or the Victorian equivalent of a TOC using SER's infrastructure? From reading the articles it really isn't clear. danno_uk 22:37, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * the Victorian equivalent of a TOC using SER's infrastructure - that sort of thing (big company owning track, smaller company running the trains) didn't happen until modern times. What did often happen prior to 1948 was that the infrastructure was owned by a small company, and a larger railway would operate the trains for a proportion of the receipts. Depending upon the nature of the agreement, the smaller company might be described as being "leased to" the larger, or as being "worked by" the larger. This happened with the London & Greenwich Railway, which was worked by the SER until the end of 1898, and then by the SE&CR from 1899 until 1922.
 * As regards the Gravesend & Rochester Railway (G&RR), see Awdry (1990), p. 187 - the G&RR was initially constructed by the Thames and Medway Canal which laid the single-track railway line along the canal towpath, including through the two tunnels at Higham and Strood, opening in February 1845. The company was bought by the SER in 1846, which decided to convert the railway line to double track - this involved filling in the eastern end of the canal through the tunnels, which have a tight loading gauge to this day. The line reopened in 1847 as a fully-integrated part of the SER's system; the western end of the canal continued to be used as such until the 1930s. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:18, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Many thanks for the explanation. danno_<b style="color:#336633">u</b><b style="color:#003300">k</b> 19:02, 20 May 2021 (UTC)