23 route review

The third in this series whereby we are looking at sections 1-4b of the RVR's project plan. Starting at Austens Bridge on the Western fringes of owned land we move East to the K&ESR's Bodiam station.
Accompanying blog rvrailway.blogspot.com/2023/1...

[@1258-Eckhart]

An excellent explanatory video, well done. I doff my hat to all landowners in England who have respected the course of a disused railway and not ploughed it up or built on it. Maybe it's currently disused, but as this wonderful project proves, that doesn't have to remain so.

[@alistairkewish651]

I didn’t know Junction Road had its own siding. You learn something new every day.

[@MsLancer99]

Thanks for the update on the Rother Valley Railway. Look forward to the opening day

[@18101957dja]

Great work- this is going to be so good!

[@chrisst8922]

The Junction Road crossing strikes me as a very complicated matter. More so than that of the A21 even. First of all the old A229 is one of the best roads in Kent & East Eussex. Secondly there's two narrow bridges over the river and presumably they'll have to be widened when the crossing goes in. I didn't realise either that there is an offical Kent & East Sussex/ Rother Valley boundary.

[@jackx4311]

I'm not clear on why you think the bridges would have to be widened; if they were wide enough to take Southern and BR trains up until 1954 (which they were), why would they need widening? How and where does the A229 come into it? The nearest that road gets to the K&ESR / Rother Valley line is where it finishes at Hurst Green - about *3 miles north* of Robertsbridge. The reason for the official boundary between the RVR and K&ESR is to protect the site at Tenterden. The RVR was set up as a completely separate concern, so that if, for any reason, the RVR went bankrupt, the creditors could not seize the K&ESR section of the line as payments for any outstanding debts. If that had happened, you can bet your life developers would have grabbed Tenterden Station and the land surrounding it, demolished the buildings, sold the rolling stock for scrap, and built a "prestigious residential development" on the site - which would have raked in millions.

[@chrisst8922]

@@jackx4311 The bridges I'm refering to are the road bridges over the river on the old A229, now the B2244 a few paces south of the trackbed. Currently they're the width of about one and a half cars. You're so right about Tenderden Staion. What though will the line be called when it opens fully?

[@HighWealder]

The only problem with the road is the maniacs who use it as a racetrack.

[@dodgydruid]

Any old farmer will tell you things got worse when steam trains went away, plants and trees abs thrive on carbons, it is their food and of course steam engines helped farmland with fertilisation from the smuts of coal and cinders, ashes etc and the linesides were excellently hydrated by steam engines passing so it was a win win for nature hence why lineside vegetation has always been hardy and excellent wherever steam engines worked. My late father would always take the coal ashes from his signalboxes for his own garden as well as for his father's allotments and garden orchards producing excellent produce every year helped by my grandfather driving down to Westerham along the A25 looking for horse doings for his compost. He liked my fathers ashes as BR used best Welsh steam coal in the boxes bunker, none of your cheap brown Polish muck and I have fond memories as a kiddie in the signalbox watching him build up the fire, the ticking of the clock, the bells and clanks as levers back and forth, happier days (prob Cuxton or Snodland I am remembering there, I remember Sole St, Longfield, Orpington A, Cuxton Down and Strood Odeon) Father practically rebuilt Snodland box from the bricks up, new shingles, put in a flushing toilet christened by Snodland resident Ted Hughes aka Judge Dread, rebuilt the roof, put in a complete new floor and tiles, he did that for Cuxton too back in the 70's.

[@adriansmith6530]

Sound track is faulty. Bad mic?