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Sheerness-on-Sea
The coming of the railway in 1860
According to the historian Charles Igglesden, a bridge connected Sheppey to the mainland at Elmley during the reign of Edward 1 (1239-1307). It was allegedly called the Tremsethg Bridge but was lost in a freak tidal wave and 
never replaced. Until 1860 Sheppey had to rely on ferry services at Harty, Elmley and the Kings Ferry then just the Kings Ferry with tolls payable at each one. The harty Ferry closed during the 1st World War and in spite of several attempts to restart (one with a world war 11 DUKW) it remains
closed.
Simon Magnus had the present Chatham memorial synagogue built as a memorial to his son, Captain Lazarus Simon Magnus. It was formally opened and consecrated in 1869. Captain Lazarus Magnus was a highly respected man, active in local and communal affairs. He was a captai
n in the 4th. Kent Artillary Volunteers, a member of the Board of Management of the Chatham Synagogue, a director of the Chatham Railway and a Mayor of Queenborough, a town on the Isle of Sheppey (apparently as a mark of gratitude for his having been instrumental in bringing the railway to Sheerness and Queenborough). He died accidentally, at the early age of thirty nine years, when he was still
unmarried
In 1856 an independent concern known as the ''Sittingbourne & Sheerness Railway'' was established to construct a seven mile single-track line between its two namesake locations (via Queenborough, the port of which was later opened in 1876 to provide boat customers with a short rail connection with the capital). Previously, in 1853, the ''East Kent Railway'' had been formed to provide an alternate railway route to London from east of the River Medway, the South Eastern Railway having decided to miss out this area when given the option of extending its North Kent Line over the Medway. On 25th January 1858 the East Kent Railway initiated train services between Sittingbourne and Faversham; a connection would be made with the Sittingbourne & Sheerness Railway. Construction began on the branch in the late 1850s, with completion coming in July 1860, services commencing on 19th of that month. From the outset services were run by the East Kent Railway which, in 1859, had changed its name to the ''London Chatham & Dover Railway''. A triangular junction was provided half a mile to the west of Sittingbourne to allow both Kent-bound and London-bound traffic direct access to the branch, without the need for a reversing manoeuvre. A specially designated platform for shuttle services to Sheerness was provided at Sittingbourne
Chatham train leaving Sheerness
and an hourly service to the island was run from Victoria. In 1866 the Sittingbourne & Sheerness Railway was absorbed into the much larger LondonChatham& Dover Railway.
Sheppey's first terminus was simply named ''Sheerness'', located some half a mile from the town centre. This station was short-lived, a half mile extension being made to a more convenient site for passengers in 1883, ''Sheerness-on-Sea'' station opening at the end of the branch on 1st June 1883. The naming of the new station with the ''on-Sea'' suffix was to promote the location as a holiday resort, thus encouraging more traffic down the line. The original station was renamed ''Sheerness Dockyard'' and connections were ma
de with the Royal Navy establishment. Until December 1914 trains continued to stop at both Sheerness Dockyard and Sheerness-on-Sea stations, a reversing manoeuvre being a necessity into the former to gain access to the latter. However, with the outbreak of World War I the Sheerness branch was completely closed and re-opening did not come until as late as January 1922. During this time a connecting spur had been constructed to give Sheerness-on-Sea Station direct access to the branch, thus eliminating the need for trains to reverse into the Dockyard station. As a result, the latter never re-opened to passengers and was subsequently converted to a goods depot, railway connections with the Naval establishment and steel works having been made.
The 1883 Sheerness-on-Sea Station consisted of two platforms separated by three tracks, with a single-storey clapboard building bei
ng erected at the very end of the lines. Third rail electrification reached the terminus in 1959, when the section of line between Sittingbourne and Swale Halt (on the mainland side of the River Swale) was doubled; until then, a half-hourly shuttle service was operated from Sittingbourne, fronted by a Gillingham-based engine. The full electric timetable was implemented on 15th June of that year, concurrent with the ''Chatham'' main line. The original station structures survived up until February 1971, at which time a train over-shot the buffer stops and demolished the right-hand half of the timber station building, which had remained virtually unchanged from its 1883 appearance.
There was one fatality. It happened on the night of the annual Welsh Society dinner and dance. Several doctors were at the dance an
d were called out to the accident.
As a result of the accident a featureless structure of typical British Rail 1970s architecture was erected, but the remaining half of the timber building - albeit looking quite unusual - was retained. Sadly, this was later demolished and platform lines could now be viewed from the street, but the original platform canopies were retained. Direct hourly services from London to Sheerness ceased after the 1973 timetable and a change is now required at Sittingbourne for a shuttle service to the town.
Queenborough
Advent of rail to Queenborough
The branch to Sheerness was one of the East Kent Railway's early expansion concepts, which aimed to delve deep into supposedly potential SER territory. The origins of the project can be traced back to a time before the East Kent had even opened its first stretch of operational railway between Faversham and Chatham. In 1856, another independent concern known as the ''Sittingbourne & Sheerness Company'' had been formed to complete a seven-mile single-track line between its namesake locations. This was a recurring theme throughout the history of Kent's railways: the larger companies generally built the main lines, whilst smaller, local concerns instigated the development of branch lines fanning from the trunk routes. The branch from Sittingbourne to Sheerness opened to passenger traffic on 19th July 1860 - the LC&DR (renamed from ''East Kent'' in 1859) would not initiate running to Victoria until 3rd December of the same year. As expected, the LC&DR ran the services on the line from the outset, although the branch itself remained part of the smaller Sittingbourne & Sheerness Company until this itself was absorbed by the former in 1866.
On opening, the branch only had one intermediate station, that of ''Queenborough'', and the line terminated at a ''Sheerness'' station which was to the west of the present terminus. The name ''Queenborough'' derives from the wife of King Edward III: Queen Phillippa. Queenborough became a point of considerable strategic importance on two occasions, but first it is worth examining the station itself before looking at the lines which branched from it. The impressive station building here is very untypical of the basic intermediate stops found on the LC&DR main line; this is quite simply because its design and construction were undertaken by the line's aforementioned builder. Distinct parallels can be made between the main building and a counterpart in Hampshire: opened by the ''Lymington Railway Company'' on 12th July 1858, Lymington Town station could be passed off as a Sittingbourne & Sheerness creation and indeed, it dates from the very same era. Lymington Town's pitched roof and window frame designs replicate those found at Queenborough - all it lacks is the overall building symmetry. The two structures are, in fact, related. Both the Lymington and Sittingbourne & Sheerness Railways employed the same engineer to oversee their construction: this was one John Cass Birkinshaw. Whilst succeeding in Hampshire, he was not so fortunate on Sheppey, the railway company's directors blaming him for the line's slow rate of construction. He was subsequently sacked, being replaced by T.E. Marsh, but his influence on the route remains enshrined in Queenborough's station building. At Queenborough, two platforms were in evidence, the single track splitting into through loops, but the ornate structure of the ''down'' side was not repeated on the ''up'' platform, a timber waiting shelter instead being suffice here. No footbridge was present on the station's opening, a track-level crossing at the London end of the platforms being used until provision of the former was made in the latter year's of the LC&DR's existence. A goods yard and shed were features of Queenborough, being located alongside the ''down'' line at the Sheerness end of the platforms.
It was on 15th May 1876 that Queenborough became a junction, the line to Sheerness itself sprouting a branch of its own. The short spur terminated on the edge of the coastline, a station named ''Queenborough Pier'' being provided there. The short branch to the pier station owed its existence to the ''Zealand Shipping Company'', which the LC&DR had hitherto been serving the steam ship passenger traffic of at Ramsgate. The two companies reached a mutual agreement to transfer terminal facilities from the latter, to the Isle of Sheppey. Consequently, this led to the rival SER instigating the independent ''Hundred of Hoo Railway Company'' to build a branch from the North Kent Line (Hoo Junction) to the Isle of Grain, where it opened rival facilities at Port Victoria. It was not all plain sailing for the LC&DR at the Port of Queenborough, however, and in 1882 the pier station was destroyed by a catastrophic fire, forcing Zealand Shipping services to Flushing to temporarily transfer to Dover, whilst the pier was rebuilt. To coin a well known phrase, ''things come in threes'' - this was certainly the case for the pier station, which had hit a string of bad luck. The second disaster to occur was that in 1887, which saw floods on the Sheerness branch line prevent trains from reaching the pier, followed by an even more destructive occurrence in 1900: a second devastating fire. The LC&DR and SER had amalgamated into the SE&CR the previous year, thus whilst the pier station was again rebuilt, shipping services were simply transferred over the mouth of the Medway to Port Victoria. The rebuilt station remained open only until November 1914, World War I seeing the complete cessation of shipping traffic to the continent, and it did not re-open to regular passenger traffic again. The shipping services were subsequently re-instated at Harwich in Essex after the war and the spur to the pier station remained open until 1956, as a very lightly-used goods branch.
The second branch emanating from Queenborough was that to the potential seaside resort of Leysdown. Its construction was authorised on 3rd May 1899 with the formation of the independent ''Sheppey Light Railway'', which had been created to build the 8¾ mile long branch cutting through the centre of the island. The company enlisted the services of Holman (later ''Colonel'') Stephens as engineer for the line, to oversee its construction, a task he undertook concurrently with the development of the ''Kent & East Sussex Light Railway''. Holman Stephens was seemingly a connoisseur when it came to building Light Railways, and the branch across Sheppey was no arduous task to undertake, it crossing mostly flat land requiring minimal earthworks. The same man had also engineered the East Kent Light Railway at Shepherdswell, but sadly his lines had one thing in common: they were unprofitable ventures. Perhaps it would be unfair to apply such a verdict to the Colonel's Hawkhurst branch, which for a while did serve the plentiful passenger and goods traffic generated by the growing of hops in the surrounding fields. Through running to Leysdown began on 1st August 1901 and the line's ''Light Railway'' status limited trains to a conservative speed limit of 25 MPH, which was perfectly adequate for the nature of the route. Including Leysdown, there were seven stations on this route, the first of which was ''Sheerness East'' - this was the third station named after the island's main town, the remaining two being ''Sheerness Dockyard'' and ''Sheerness-on-Sea''. A bay line was provided alongside the ''up'' platform at Queenborough station for terminating trains from Leysdown.
Sheppey Light Railway stations and opening years
· Queenborough: 1860
· Sheerness East: 1901
· East Minster-on-Sea: 1902
· Minster-on-Sea: 1901
· Brambledown Halt: 1905
· Eastchurch: 1901
· Harty Road: 1905
· Leysdown: 1901
Those stations which opened with the branch were of standard Holman Stephens architecture, being of corrugated iron construction, but their design remained traditional. Although a few more stations appeared shortly after the line's opening, the coastal resort of Leysdown never developed to the degree the original railway promoters had hoped it would. The branch became an early casualty of British Railways, closing to passenger traffic on 4th December 1950. With the ultimate decommissioning of the former Pier branch in 1956 from its ''goods traffic'' status, Queenborough merely became a basic intermediate station, but its goods yard remained open to traffic.
The first scheduled electric services reached Sheerness on 15th June 1959 and for this, the platforms at Queenborough were extended at their Sheerness ends to accommodate longer EMU formations. An electric sub-station was also constructed at the site to feed the third rail of the Sheerness branch, should the supply from the mainland be cut-off. During the 1970s the ''up'' side timber waiting shelter was removed and replaced by a soulless bus shelter-like abomination, and the brick-built goods shed was also later demolished. The single-storey section on the north side of the main station building was razed to the ground and replaced by a portacabin, whilst the ''pitched'' upper floor of the south end of the building was also demolished, the remaining ground floor section simply receiving a tarmac roof. The exhausts of the chimney stacks have also been removed and sadly, the majority of windows boarded up. However, the goods yard sidings remained in situ for many years, although there was evidence of track lifting in 2004.
