Britain’s leading Railway Society
RARELY a volume of the Railway Observer passes without some reference, feature or photograph, of the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway (RH&DR).
The brainchild of Captain Howey and Henry Greenly, the 15in-gauge RH&DR was in every sense of the word a miniature mainline, with 4-6-2s based on Nigel Gresley’s LNER ‘A1s’.
Running 14½ miles from Hythe to Dungeness on the Kent coast it quickly became a useful public service and holiday attraction. By the time trains started running on July 16, 1927, the railway had already been visited by the Duke of York and Nigel Gresley.
The history of the line appeared in the February 1938 RCTS when R W Shipman wrote a well-researched article called, appropriately, The Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway.