The Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway is a light railway that runs between Hythe and Dungeness in Kent. It was built in the 1920s. Karen found this charming book of photographs of the railway. It probably dates, by the look of the children, from the mid 1950s.
The railway has an eventful history and played an important role during WW2: moving men and materials about and providing a first line of defence against potential invaders.
If you ever take the train from Hythe down to Dungeness, you should watch out for strange looking concrete structures. These are the sound-mirrors designed to detect the sound of potential enemies across the water. In the end, this kind of early-warning systems were superseded by electronic RaDaR systems. The structures were allowed to disintegrate until quite recently. Now they have been restored and are pleasingly mysterious and surrealistic.
