Lydd Town was a railway station which served the town of Lydd in Kent, England. Opened on 7 December 1881 by ''The Lydd Railway Company''. It closed to passengers in 1967 but the line through the station remained open for freight.

History

The Lydd Railway Company (LRC) obtained authorisation to construct a standard gauge single track line from Appledore to Dungeness with intermediate stops at Lydd and Brookland. Having opened the line to traffic on 7 December 1881, the railway company subsequently decided on 16 February 1882 that the line would be worked and maintained by the South Eastern Railway, whose chairman, Edward Watkin, was the father of Alfred Watkin, chairman of the LRC. On 24 July, the company was authorised to extend the line by building a branch from Lydd to

New Romney New Romney is a market town in Kent, England, on the edge of Romney Marsh, an area of flat, rich agricultural land reclaimed from the sea after the harbour began to silt up. New Romney, one of the original Cinque Ports, was once a sea port, w ...

which opened on 19 June 1884. The LRC was taken into the South Eastern in January 1895, itself becoming part of the

South Eastern and Chatham Railway The South Eastern and Chatham Railway Companies Joint Management Committee (SE&CRCJMC),Awdry (1990), page 199 known as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SE&CR), was a working union of two neighbouring rival railways, the South Easter ...

four years later. Lydd, situated from Appledore, was the principal station on the line, with a considerable goods yard and a long siding to the nearby military firing range ( Lydd Ranges) via the Lydd Military Railway (1883 - c1926). The approach to Lydd from Brookland saw the line travel over nine level crossings before passing under the line's sole overbridge carrying the B2075 Station Road, before reaching a final level crossing just before the station. The station had two platforms as well as a passing loop and a

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

on the down side. Following the opening of the

Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway The Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (RH&DR) is a gauge light railway in Kent, England, operating steam and internal combustion locomotives. The line runs from the Cinque Port of Hythe via Dymchurch, St. Mary's Bay, New Romney and Romney ...

in 1927, the extra holiday traffic generated persuaded the Southern Railway (who had taken over the line upon the railway grouping) to realign its branch to New Romney by moving it nearer to the sea and opening two new halts - Lydd-on-Sea and Greatstone-on-Sea - in 1937. The opening of Lydd-on-Sea Halt led to the renaming of Lydd station as "Lydd Town" to avoid any confusion. The station closed on 6 March 1967 in the face of dwindling passenger traffic and insignificant freight returns, although the line remained open through Lydd Town as far as a siding near Dungeness for freight traffic to serve the

BNFL British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) was a nuclear energy and fuels company owned by the UK Government. It was a manufacturer of nuclear fuel (notably MOX), ran reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent fuel (mainly ...

nuclear power plant at Dungeness.

Present and future

The main station building and goods yard remain in an empty and derelict state, having been used as a vehicle repair workshop until the mid-1980s, which led to some internal walls being removed. The up platform has also survived, but the down platform and

were demolished in the early 1970s, and the original passing loop was lifted after 1993. The station has suffered from vandalism, with a recent fire destroying a modern shed on the site and lightly damaging the southern end of the main building. In May 2006,

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

put the site on the market for redevelopment. In March 2008, planning permission was granted to

Kent County Council Kent County Council is a county council that governs most of the county of Kent in England. It is the upper tier of elected local government, below which are 12 district councils, and around 300 town and parish councils. The county council h ...

to use the goods yard for the temporary storage of refuse collection vehicles. In July 2013, a new passing loop was added. The future reuse of the station as a "rail transport interchange" has been written into Shepway District Local Plan which safeguards the route against development prejudicial to the reopening of the line from Appledore to the public. Although reopening of the line to passengers has been mooted from time to time – particularly with regard to improving public access to Lydd Airport – the plans have never materialised. One obstacle in the way of reopening is the 13 level crossings and occupational farm crossings between Appledore and Lydd, which would have to be converted to automatic full-barrier crossings with obstacle detection. Furthermore, neither the line through Lydd nor the Ashford to Hastings line is electrified, requiring passengers to change at

Ashford International Ashford International railway station is a National Rail station in Ashford, Kent, England. It connects several railway lines, including High Speed 1 and the South Eastern Main Line. Services are operated by Southeastern and Southern. The stat ...

diesel railcars Diesel may refer to: * Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression * Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines * Diesel locomotive A diesel locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in w ...

. On 7 November 2022 the station building was severely damaged by a fire.

References

External links

Lydd Town Station
at Subterranea Britannica

at Kent Rail.co.uk {{coord, 50.9567, 0.9174, type:railwaystation_region:GB, display=title Disused railway stations in Kent Former South Eastern Railway (UK) stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1881 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1967 Beeching closures in England Lydd 1881 establishments in England