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HF Stephens
Colonel Holman Fred Stephens (31 October 1868 – 23 October 1931) was a British light railway civil engineer and manager. He was engaged in engineering and building, and later managing, 16 light railways in England and Wales. Biography Stephens was the son of Frederic George Stephens, Pre-Raphaelite artist and art critic, and his wife the artist Rebecca Clara (née Dalton). He was named after his father's friend and former tutor, the painter Holman Hunt, although the two later fell out. He was a great nephew of the naturalist, explorer and biologist, Charles Darwin. Stephens was apprenticed in the workshops of the Metropolitan Railway in 1881. He was an assistant engineer during the building of the Cranbrook and Paddock Wood Railway, which opened in 1892. In 1894 he became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, which allowed him to design and build railways in his own right. He immediately set about his lifetime's project of operating light railways for r ...
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Light Railway
A light railway is a railway built at lower costs and to lower standards than typical "heavy rail": it uses lighter-weight track, and may have more steep gradients and tight curves to reduce civil engineering costs. These lighter standards allow lower costs of operation, at the price of lower vehicle capacity. Narrow gauge thumb , right , 250px , Restored Molli railway at Kühlungsborn, Mecklenburg">Kühlungsborn.html" ;"title="Molli railway at Kühlungsborn">Molli railway at Kühlungsborn, Mecklenburg, Germany () In countries where a single standard gauge is dominant, the term light railway does not imply a narrow gauge railway. Most narrow gauge railways operate as light railways, but not all light railways need be narrow gauge. After Spooner's development of steam haulage for narrow gauge railways, the prevailing view was that the gauge should be tailored according to the traffic: "''The nearer the machine is apportioned to the work it has to do the cheaper will ...
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Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two Major party, major List of political parties in the United Kingdom, political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs (British political party), Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites and reformist Radicals (UK), Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century it had formed four governments under William Ewart Gladstone, William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule Movement, Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, 1906 general election. Under Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed Liberal welfare reforms, reforms that created a basic welfare state. Although Asquith was the Leader of t ...
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Richborough
Richborough () is a settlement north of Sandwich on the east coast of the county of Kent, England. Richborough lies close to the Isle of Thanet. The population of the settlement is included in the civil parish of Ash. Although now some distance from the sea, Richborough stood at the southern end of the Wantsum Channel from prehistory to the early medieval period. The channel provided a safe searoute from the continent to the Thames estuary and separated the Isle of Thanet from the mainland. The channel has now silted up, but prior to this, Richborough was an important natural harbour and was the landing place of the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43. Until October 2008 there was uncertainty whether this was the site of the Claudian invasion of Britain; two ditches at the site which have been dated to the Roman period were interpreted as defensive structures; however, some archaeologists had favoured the theory that the landing took place in the vicinity of modern-day Chic ...
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East Kent Light Railway
The East Kent Light Railway was part of the Colonel Stephens group of cheaply built rural light railways in England. Holman Fred Stephens was engineer from its inception, subsequently becoming director and manager. The line ran from Shepherdswell to Wingham (Canterbury Road) Station with a branch from Eastry through Poison Cross to Richborough Port. Built primarily for colliery traffic within the Kent Coalfields, the line was built with many spurs and branches to serve the mines, with cancelled plans to construct extensions to several others. The success of Tilmanstone colliery allowed the main line of the railway to continue operation until 1986. A remainder of the line became the East Kent Railway, a heritage railway, in 1987. History Pre WW1 The ''East Kent Light Railways'' (official title) was originally conceived before the First World War as a network of lines in East Kent linking at least nine proposed collieries in the newly discovered Kent coalfield to ...
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Edge Hill Light Railway
The Edge Hill Light Railway, one of Colonel Stephens' light railways, was in Warwickshire, England. It was designed to carry ironstone from Edge Hill Quarries to Burton Dassett where a junction was made with the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway. It was never officially opened, but began operating in 1922. In the middle of the line, there was a cable-worked inclined plane at 1 in 6 (16%). As the quarry was at the top of the incline, the incline could be worked as self-acting: the weight of full ore wagons descending was sufficient to draw the empties back up. Within three years it was found that the iron ore deposits were uneconomic, and the line ceased operating in 1925. It was not dismantled until 1946. A caretaker was employed until the late 1930s in the possibility that the line could be re-opened. In 1942, permanent way from the lower portion of the line was requisitioned for the construction of the army depot now known as MoD Kineton Defence Muniti ...
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South Eastern Railway (UK)
The South Eastern Railway (SER) was a railway company in south-eastern England from 1836 until 1922. The company was formed to construct a route from London to Dover. Branch lines were later opened to Tunbridge Wells, Hastings, Canterbury and other places in Kent. The SER absorbed or leased other railways, some older than itself, including the London and Greenwich Railway and the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway. Most of the company's routes were in Kent, eastern Sussex and the London suburbs, with a long cross-country route from in Surrey to Reading, Berkshire. Much of the company's early history saw attempts at expansion and feuding with its neighbours; the London Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) in the west and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) to the north-east. However, in 1899 the SER agreed with the LCDR to share operation of the two railways, work them as a single system (marketed as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway) and pool recei ...
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Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of —later slightly widened to —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways. The GWR was called by some "God's Wonderful Railway" and by others the "Great Way Round" but it was famed as the "Holi ...
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Burry Port And Gwendraeth Valley Railway
:''Note: During most of the period of operation of the BP&GVR the anglicised spellings of Welsh place names were in use, and for consistency are used in this article. The Company's registered name included the incorrect spelling ''Gwendreath'' due to an error by parliamentary draftsmen.'' The Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway (BP&GVR) was a mineral railway company that constructed a railway line in Carmarthenshire, Wales, by conversion of a canal, to connect collieries and limestone pits to the sea at Kidwelly. It extended its network to include Burry Port, Trimsaran and a brickworks at Pwll, later extending to Sandy near Llanelli. For a time the company worked the separate Gwendraeth Valleys Railway. The BP&GVR was notable because of the very low height of some overbridges, a legacy of the canal conversion. It was completely dependent on the economy of the mineral industries it served and due to depression in them, it was for many years in administration. In the final year ...
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Ashover Light Railway
The Ashover Light Railway was a narrow gauge railway in Derbyshire, England that connected Clay Cross and Ashover. It was built by the Clay Cross Company to transport minerals such as limestone, fluorite, barytes and gritstone to its works at Clay Cross and for transport around the country by the LMS. History George Stephenson surveyed the route for the North Midland Railway between Derby and Leeds in the 1830s. The route passed close to Ashover where Stephenson saw the potential for the development of a colliery. He formed George Stephenson & Company in 1837 and built a colliery and coke ovens at Clay Cross which opened in 1840. The company passed to his son Robert Stephenson on George's death in 1848, and in 1852 he sold his shares, the business becoming the Clay Cross Company, which was at one time the largest independent employer in the UK. The company continued to develop its mining interests and in 1918 it purchased the Overton Estate at Fallgate with the ...
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Tenterden Town Railway Station
Tenterden Town railway station is a heritage railway station on the Kent and East Sussex Railway in Tenterden, Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ..., England. When the railway line first opened in 1900, Rolvenden Station was known as "Tenterden". Its name was changed when the line extended north three years later and a station closer to Tenterden was constructed. The new ''Tenterden Town'' station opened on 16 March 1903. The line closed for regular passenger services on 4 January 1954 and all traffic in 1961. It reopened on 3 February 1974 under the aegis of the Tenterden Railway Company which bought the line between Tenterden and Bodiam. The station now houses the KESR's Carriage and Wagon works, and the Colonel Stephens Museum is located nearby. Services ...
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