!940's weekend at K&ES Railway.

Unfortunately  our weekend rally with the West Kent Cente at Tenterden was cancelled midweek by the landowner as his field was just too wet to take us – sadly, a common occurrence at the moment, all across the country !

But we decided we would still make the trip for the day, with our friends, to enjoy the event we had intended to spend the weekend enjoying. We set off Saturday morning, drove up and picked up our friends, then set off for Tenterden, about an hours drive. As to be expected we queued to get into the town, but not for long and we opted to pay the £5 to park behind the station, so we were delighted to be told that we could redeem the expense as a discount off our train ticket !

Unfortunately  I can only add five pictures to this story, so to pick those is a hard job (I took 50 !!). It seemed as though everyone had dressed up. The military presence (1940s style) was everywhere, we were given Identity cards as we entered the Kent & East Sussex Railway Station, which we thought was a nice touch – little realising we would be searching through our bags later as the MPs came on the Evacuees Train and checked them!!!

We rode the train to Northiam and Bodium where there were dancers on the platform, fabulous singing and loads of stalls and exhibits to look at, again with everyone dressed the part – fabulous ! While we there we also had a flypast by a Dakota airplane. The vintage cars, bicycles & even an ambulance were wonderful and set off the trains beautifully. There were a few unexploded bombs lying around but no-one seemed to be worried (or attending to them!) and, of course, train delays were all down to enemy action on the line ! But no-one worried, we were in no hurry.

It was a shame about the rally, but still a great day out !

Alison