'Reflections' is an account of life as a fireman on the Canterbury to Whitstable Railway during the second world war.

The seven-mile trip from Canterbury to Whitstable produced several very different changes in normal railway practice for a young fireman. The steep climb out of Canterbury, problems in the tunnel, conservation of water and a none-too-helpful mate on the footplate. Quite a new outlook on the job.

The shunting work in Whitstable harbour was likewise an odd experience. Access from Tankerton Halt was through crossing gates over Harbour Street and into the yard. The main section of this yard was out-of-bounds for our engine because a small weighbridge, just inside would not stand its weight. This was something nobody had told me about, and on my first day 'Tucker' had left me to do the shunting while he disappeared on urgent errands. The shunter on the ground ahead called the engine forward and I put all wheels on the table of the weighbridge.

At that precise moment, 'Tucker' walked round the back of a raft of wagons. He leapt into the air and gave a fair imitation of an All Blacks' rugby football team ending the New Zealanders' ritual war dance. One thing must be remembered about friend Lowe; he always sought to put the blame where he thought it belonged. Never himself, of course, but on this occasion the two shunters must have wondered what had hit them. I appeared to be completely exonerated and all the way back to Canterbury was treated to a lurid biography of those shunters which, if ever published,would have landed 'Tucker' in a libel case in the law courts.

With parts of the yard denied to the locomotive, shunting at Whitstable was something quite unusual. A good deal of 'fly' shunting took place when uncoupled wagons would be put in motion by the engine, brakes applied, and the truck ran loose, carefully shepherded by a shunter with a brake-pole ready to stop it short of any obstruction. Then for my favourite part of the operation. Two beautiful Shire horses took over from the engine and the shunting carried on, quite mechanically, through the available horse-power directed by a groom-cum-shunter who handled those intelligent beasts like a computer. A whistle here, a nod there and the horse would respond just like a piece of machinery.

Our loads were mainly, in wartime don't forget, of coal grain or aggregates. In the early days of the harbour, coal was brought in by ship from the north east. My experience was that the position was now reversed and coal from the nearby Kent coalfield - Chislet, Betteshanger, Snowdown or Tilmanstone pits - was loaded into barges for shipment to the north. Grain boats, specially fitted with equipment for loading cargoes into "rail wagons by a suction method, provided plenty of work.

We would take our six ten-tonners over to Canterbury where they would be marshalled onto a Ramsgate/Ashford service that night and deposited in Pledges Sidings at Ashford. Pledge's Flour Mills would ensure a good supply of bread, far and wide. 'Tucker' Lowe had a special and clandestine interest in this transaction. How it was done I will never know but, at a time when poultry-feed was extremely hard to come by, the chicken housed in 'Tucker's' allotment run were obviously very well fed.

But we can pick up this story a little later. For the moment we have to mention certain dramatic events on the night of Sunday/ Monday 31 May and 1 June 1942 - events which temporarily put a stop to many activities in the Canterbury City area at that time.

It happened that my spell of firewatching duties fell on that fateful night. But I was far away from the scene, and the danger, in Ashford. At about 01.00 hours we began to see flashes of light out towards Canterbury and while there was nothing unusual about seeing searchlights, flares and the flashing of anti-aircraft guns all around our part of Kent when the 'Red' warning was on, this was obviously something different.

Very quickly, a crowd of neighbours congregated at the end of Essella Road, by Ashford's football ground, and there was a good deal of speculation as to what might be happening. There had already been talk of German ' Baedeker' air-raids and we guessed the cathedral might be under direct fire. My concern was how 'Tucker' and other workmates would be doing at this moment. And how to get to Canterbury today? We had plenty of aircraft noise and activity of our own, of course, and the Railway-Works was surely a tempting target for the Heinkels, Stukkas and the rest? So it was necessary to stay on the alert, armed with stirrup-pumps and buckets of sand until it seemed reasonably safe to leave.

Over in the locomotive sheds I discovered that trains would be very much delayed into Canterbury. But a light engine was being sentdown to lay a sort of 'flarepath' for Ashford's breakdown train and crew to follow. So I cadged a ride on the footplate and managed to get to the depot at 05.00 hours - about an hour before my usual signing-on time. That the City had been badly damaged was evident from the smoke and flames all around.

My first sight of direct damage was the spectacle of driver Edwin Lowe, tears streaming down his face, dropping the carcass of one of his chickens down a fair-sized crater in the middle of his garden. The chicken-run and the whole of his big garden shed had been demolished. The whole area around the West-Station and the loco-shed was a shambles. Beyond, looking toward the shopping area, smoke billowed high and wide. It was one of my most sickening experiences of the war. And on the railways in London and the S.E. coast in those hectic days we had a few.

After sizing up the immediate situation and making sure that nothing could be done to ease the traffic situation on the railways at Canterbury, I helped 'Tucker' to put things back into as much order as possible and then asked what I could do elsewhere?

The police, fire-services and wardens were fully occupied so I gave a hand here and there, and then wandered off through West Gate and into the town. Absolutely appalling! Fire hoses, lorries moving bricks and mortar, emergency services working feverishly everywhere, and the stench of burning timber - these sights, sound and smells were never-to-be-forgotten reminders for the rest of my life of the utter futility, the insanity, of war.

A walk along the wall toward the Dane John and round the higher and wider vantage points demonstrated the severity of the raid. But damage to the railway at this time looked very light, indeed. Those Baedeker attacks obviously concentrated on causing maximum psychological impact on the population rather than material damage to defence or industrial targets. These factors have been extensively chronicled elsewhere, of course, and this is no place to dwell on the plight of the citizens of our Cathedral City, great as that was.

Inside 24 hours we were back to something like normal services on the 'Crab & Winkle' Driver Lowe was really cut up about the loss of his chickens. He was a remarkable character. On the face of things, he had scant regard for the feelings or welfare of people around him. Yet the realisation that his pampered poultry had gone was a blow from which he hadn't recovered when I left to go back on further promotion to Ashford some six months later. He had names for each of his birds. He knew their sexes. The call of a name and the flourish of a bowl of corn would have 'Gertie' or 'Maud' or 'Bert' running toward him. Sad, that.

Which brings us back to the matter of loads of maize and other corn on the railway service from Whitstable. The summer following this air raid saw masses of young corn plants growing vigorously in all the allotments adjacent to Canterbury West locomotive depot. Gardeners swapped ideas as to the origin of the seed. They ranged from the suggestion that this was some sort of devine act like 'manna from heaven' to wind-blown seed distributed far and wide. I could have told them it was nothing of the kind.

In 'Tucker' Lowe's garden shed on that fateful night, several very large galvanised-iron dustbins filled with the best maize from the Whitstable barges had been blown sky-high. This was the agent responsible for the widespread sowing and eventual harvesting of sweet corn in Canterbury. Just how it got into the dustbins I will never know. But is is worth noting that 'Tucker's' chickens were positively the best-fed, up to that time, in the whole of Britain. Perhaps it is just as well that the infamous 'Lord Haw Haw', lately of Whitstable, never got to know the full detail of that vicious air raid on Canterbury?

Despite these reverses, life in the Canterbury/Whitstable area carried on much as usual each day. I recall fields of flowers outside Canterbury West, on the Sturry Road, acres of 'Sweet William' or'Wallflowers' or whatever may be in season. Huge bunches of these could be had for a few coppers and I would take orders in the shed at Ashford, delivering them on return that evening. In the harbour, too, shellfish abounded with all manner of other fish, also. Another good market back home. It had become established practice that the fireman on the 'Crab & Winkle' would provide this provender for the strictly rationed people of Ashford during the war years .

Those daily journeyings through the woods to Whitstable were likewise quite rewarding. The railway banks produced all the wild spring and summer flowers needed to relieve the gloom of wartime. Primroses and violets with bluebells and anemones were to be had in grand profusion. Later it was the wild strawberries, tiny but extremely tasty. Then, toward autumn, up in the overgrown gardens of the few cottages that once housed railway pumphouse workers (actually these were the sites of the original stationary steam engines which hauled Invicta's trains wherever she dared not go) trees full of ripe greengages, plums, apples and pears were there for the plundering.

My great regret about the short time I spent on the Canterbury to Whitstable Harbour Railway - something like twelve months - was really a golden opportunity wasted. If my driver, or any other railway colleagues had known anything of the real history of the line, I would certainly have nosed around to discover more - while on the spot. But no-one told me anything of this important 'Whitstable First' - the very first fully steam-operated railway in the world. Nor was I to learn about those other important developments like the first steamship to sail from Britain, out of Whitstable Harbour, to Australia; or the first Council Housing scheme; the first deep-water diving apparatus - never mind about the first railway bridge, tunnel, or the first railway season tickets to be issued in the world.

It is a shame that the exceptionally steep inclines out of Canterbury and in reverse up Honey Hill bank to Tyler Hill proved much too severe for poor old Invicta. Yet here again we have an engineering 'first'. This little locomotive was the first to be built with outside cylinders at the front end. The famous Rocket -just one of several from the same Robert Stephenson stable - had rear-mounted cylinders and it is a fact that the Invicta arrangement caught on and became much more popular as bigger and more powerful locomotives were introduced.

The awful shame is, of course, that the politicians finally allowed this line to be torn up when British Rail decided that the service was uneconomical and must be withdrawn. Had someone with the necessary forethought and enterprise taken over when the line closed in December 1952, what a tremendous difference this would have made in the area - especially in Whitstable.

The Canterbury & Whitstable Railway would have become an international steam haven. Railway buffs from all over the world would now be paying regular pilgrimages. Trade and development in East Kent would have benefitted and could have been a model for the rest of Britain. The former Whitstable Urban District Council must take the major blame for allowing this historic reminder of the marvels of early railway engineering to disappear from the face of the earth. Canterbury councillors may have thought they could only cope with pilgrims of a different species and just couldn't bother with more. Whitstable's representatives should have known better.

In the past two decades particularly, odd bits of British Rail have been bought up by keen railway 'supporters' like artist David Shepherd or by business types who recognise a good investment when they see one. So we now have steam railway preservation societies springing up all over the country - not a few in the most unlikely places. Run by knowledgeable enthusiasts and volunteers these refurbished lines are able to make profits while British Rail incur horrendous losses in operating a service which has become the laughing-stock of Europe.

For those of us who were part of the daily working fabric of the line in its final years, the loss of such a rich national asset hurts. All that is left of the line is memory. We are lucky to have at hand Mike Page's book, "In The Tracks of Railway History", to retrace the route - which he does in graphic style. But we all know that the sprawl of bricks and mortar development at the Canterbury end of the line has made restoration impossible. So the pain stays with us.

Copyright (c) Don Pullen. Many thanks to his family for permission to use this article.

Links

The Whitstable 'Home Guard' - BBC Website article