(Images: Mike Morant; Ron Strutt; the Ramsgate Tunnel Railway)
Adjacent to a small roundabout on Marina Esplanade in Ramsgate, an innocuous, long-sealed portal betrays one of the last remnants of the Kent town’s abandoned Tunnel Railway. The seaside resort’s curious little railway closed in September 1965. And while its now best-known as part of the restored Ramsgate tunnels, a vast wartime air-raid shelter complex deep beneath the town, the line’s origins are bound up in the Victorian transportation renaissance that gripped 19th century Britain in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.
The route was first opened in 1863, when the London, Chatham and Dover Railway drove a tunnel through the bedrock to the seafront. The aim was to draw lucrative tourist traffic away from its rival, the South Eastern Railway, which had established Ramsgate’s first train station on the outskirts of town almost two decades earlier.
(Image: Disco-Dan)
The 1,124-yard tunnel allowed trains to pass beneath the bustling streets above and terminate at Ramsgate Harbour station, which was ideally located for tourists and day-trippers heading to the seaside from London via Herne Bay, Margate and Broadstairs. But despite its convenience, the seafront location offered little room for expansion. Cramped conditions coupled with the threat of runaway trains – heightened by the tunnel’s gradient – meant the facility was soon deemed inadequate.
But it wasn’t until after the Railways Act 1921 (when competing companies were grouped into the ‘Big Four’ operators that would dominate UK rail transport prior to World War Two) that the rival stations would come under the control of the new Southern Railway. Little time was wasted linking the previously-unconnected lines.
(Image: Disco-Dan)
Two new stations were built at Dumpton Park and St Lawrence, and in 1926 the original terminals of Ramsgate Town and Ramsgate Harbour were closed. The abandoned tunnel was swiftly sealed off and land on which the Harbour station had stood became a zoo and amusement park known as Merrie England. But as would soon become clear, the railway was missed.
Ramsgate had long competed for tourist traffic with nearby Margate, and a beachfront railway station made the latter increasingly popular. Meanwhile, down the coast, Merrie England had taken off, and owners Ramsgate Olympia lobbied the Southern Railway to reopen the abandoned tunnel and reinstate the harbour connection. And though the SR rejected the idea on cost grounds, it remained committed to making the waterfront attractions more accessible.
(Image: Iridescent; route of the now-abandoned World Scenic Railway aka Tunnel Railway)
The construction of a small electric railway was therefore agreed. This would run along 780 yards of the original Victorian tunnel before branching off into a new, narrower bore of 364 yards in length. The narrow-gauge line would emerge into a new terminus at Hereson Road, a short walk from Dumpston Park station. The route opened in 1936, connecting the mainline to Ramsgate harbour and its amusement park for the first time in a decade.
The new terminal stations, which were served by just 1,444 yards of track, boasted a central island platform for waiting passengers. A narrow outer platform allowed riders to disembark and small ticket offices were located outside each tunnel mouth. Though the upper station was called Hereson Road, the harbour terminus was never officially named. It was known variously as Beach, Sands, Olympia and Lower Terminus, and emerged into the space formerly occupied by Ramsgate Harbour station.
(Image: Disco-Dan; branching off into the new narrow-gauge tunnel to Hereson Road)
Designed by prominent narrow-gauge railway engineer Henry Greenly, the short line descended an impressive 83 feet over the course of its journey. The 2 ft gauge of the tracks meant the new tunnel could be built to smaller dimensions than the original, which can still clearly be seen where one tunnel branches away from the other deep underground.
English Electric (designers of the supersonic Lightning Cold War interceptor and Canberra bomber) supplied the locomotives, which were essentially scaled-down versions of other Southern Railway engines. The distinctive yellow-painted locos could carry 108 people and were designed to split in half at less busy times. And so it was that, on July 31, 1936, just 12 weeks after construction began, the World Scenic Railway opened to the public.
(Image: John Webb; the Ramsgate Tunnel Railway in July 1963)
Shuttling excited tourists from one terminus to another deep underground, the World Scenic Railway proved incredibly popular from the outset. Soon after opening, the short line carried 20,000 passengers over a single Bank Holiday weekend alone.
Operating between Whitsun and late September, the five-minute long journey saw trains disappear into the old Victorian tunnel to illuminated scenes from as far afield as Canada, Egypt and Japan, and closer to home in the form of the Netherlands and Switzerland. While not in use, resting locomotives were parked quietly on a siding inside the original stretch of tunnel.
(Image: Pyrotec; the Tunnel Railway’s sealed narrow-gauge inner portal in 1984)
But by the time World War Two broke out, authorities were concerned that Ramsgate’s proximity to the the Thames Estuary ports and RAF Manston airfield (with its massive emergency runway) made the Thanet town a likely target for German bombers. The decision was therefore taken to excavate a vast air-raid shelter beneath the resort, and the existing tunnels of the World Scenic Railway seemed like a good place to start.
Just three months before war was declared, a subterranean tunnel network spanning more than three miles was completed beneath the north side of Ramsgate, connected to the well-placed underground tunnels of the World Scenic Railway. Though the town’s civilian population was just 33,000 at the time, the Ramsgate tunnels could shelter a staggering 60,000 people during raids. As a result, this bastion of peaceful innocence took its place in the history of war.
(Image: Disco-Dan)
But unlike some other subterranean railways and stations commandeered for the war effort, the World Scenic Railway was destined to reopen after hostilities had ceased. The line, which was owned by Ramsgate Olympia and later Pleasurama, also remained in private hands after the 1948 nationalisation of Britain’s railways. But the post-war years saw vandalism on the rise, putting paid to the subterranean illuminations which had for a time been reinstated after hostilities ceased.
Soon after, the World Scenic Railway was renamed simply the Tunnel Railway, a name resplendent above the portals of the now-abandoned railway in the years that followed. But the metaphorical writing appeared to be on the wall. The lower terminus was reduced to a single track when part of the chalk cliff collapsed in 1957, and the old wooden platforms were replaced by concrete.
(Image: Google Street View; abandoned Tunnel Railway’s lower terminus)
Then, disaster struck in July 1965, when a train lost control inside the relatively steep tunnel and crashed off the end of the rails into a building. With 74-year-old driver Ernest Brown and several passengers injured, the decision was taken to close the old Ramsgate Tunnel Railway for good. The last train rumbled through on September 26 that year, after which the tunnel was sealed off and the rails lifted.
Much of the track found its way to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. The Hereson Road station became a car dealership while the lower terminal was cleared and now stands empty. Inside, the abandoned railway tunnel lay intact for decades, hidden away from the prying eyes of tourists. It was reopened to the public in 2014 as part of the Ramsgate tunnels tourist attraction. But the subterranean route of the abandoned Tunnel Railway retains an eerie Victorian charm, and the narrow-gauge branch to the lost upper terminus remains plain to see.
Related – Dungeness: The Strange Abandoned Tracks of a Forgotten Fishermen’s Railway
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