I have been debating building this for a while now and since I have been working on my track laying, route building and modeling skills I thought I would have a go. The most appealing period to me is in about 1990 and adding the Dover Marine station and all of the sidings in Archcliffe yard could make this route a little more interesting too. The route is using the same origin as the LG and KHS routes so merging this in for a complete Dover to London Victoria would be easily possible. There is a lot to do yet and a lot of research as well to make sure this feels accurate and authentic to the era. This means that I can't give any timeframe on when it will be completed, but it will be available publicly somehow when it is. I'll keep this thread updated as I make more progress but in the meantime here are some pictures to have a look at: Shakespeare Tunnel and the old concrete footbridge over the sea wall to the west beach. Dover priory North portal view form the sidings. Dover priory station looking North East from platform 2 Dover Priory station at night. Dover Priory platform 3 Looking south
My earliest childhood memories of railways are from about 1988-1990 (albeit in a slightly different region) and as a little kid I was bought several books filled with pics, with a lot of south eastern traction and stations featured. So I'm excited to see what you can do with this - early signs look very positive!
Excellent work there, well done. There is a WIP Dover-Faversham route in the workshop. The Dover-Faversham part is only basic geography and track but could you use that to save some time? Also, would you include the Folkestone branch, or was that closed in your time frame? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1298545317
SJA Thank you for the kind comments. I'll keep this updated as often as I can so you can see the progress. I went for this era as it is very much my childhood too, although the north Kent coast is more familiar to me in this time frame, but this looked like the more interesting part of Kent to start on. Cat, thank you and thanks for sharing that existing project. I don't think there is much I can use from there to be honest as I have laid most of my track and about 70% of the third rail too. there are a few differences too because of the era but the main ones there are around Dover. I hadn't thought about Folkestone if I'm honest. I would be more likely to look at Ramsgate to Faversham or the Deal branch first, but I don't want to think too far ahead as there are plenty of projects on my plate right now (not just TS ones). Folkestone might actually be nice to include on an earlier steam era route, maybe on the end of the Elham valley line.
A long way from done unfortunately. I realised when I started this that I had too many projects on. I have since finalised two workshop routes (links in my signature) that I had been working on and hopefully, all being well, I'll be focusing more on this one in the autumn. There have been a few small bits done though so i'll ad some pictures here for you to see. The pictures are very carefully framed as I try not to show any uncompleted areas. Approaching Selling tunnel: Selling tunnel East portal: Over the Wincheap road:
