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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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kent Railways
Kent is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Greater London to the north-west. The county town is Maidstone. The county has an area of and had population of 1,875,893 in 2022, making it the fifth most populous county in England. The north of the county contains a conurbation which includes the towns of Chatham, Gillingham, and Rochester. Other large towns are Maidstone and Ashford, and the borough of Canterbury holds city status. For local government purposes Kent consists of a non-metropolitan county, with twelve districts, and the unitary authority area of Medway. The county historically included south-east Greater London, and is one of the home counties. The north of Kent is a plain bordering the Thames Estuary. South of this is the North Downs, a chalk downland ridge which crosses the county from north-w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coal Mining
Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures are referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine. Coal mining has had many developments in recent years, from the early days of men tunneling, digging, and manually extracting the coal on carts to large Open-pit mining, open-cut and Longwall mining, longwall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of Dragline excavator, draglines, trucks, conveyors, hydraulic jacks, and shearers. The coal mining industry has a long ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Office
The War Office has referred to several British government organisations throughout history, all relating to the army. It was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, at which point its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from this source, which is available under th Open Government Licence v3.0 © Crown copyright It was equivalent to the Admiralty (United Kingdom), Admiralty at that time, which was responsible for the Royal Navy (RN), and (much later) the Air Ministry, which oversaw the Royal Air Force (RAF). The name 'Old War Office' is also given to the former home of the department, located at the junction of Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall in central London. The landmark building was sold on 1 March 2016 by HM Government for more than British pound, £350 million, on a 250-year lease for conversion int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Krupp
Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp (formerly Fried. Krupp AG and Friedrich Krupp GmbH), trade name, trading as Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century as well as Germany's premier weapons manufacturer during both world war, world wars. It produced battleship, battleships, U-boats, tanks, howitzers, guns, utilities, and hundreds of other commodities. The company also produced steel used to build railroads in the United States and to cap the Chrysler Building. After the Nazi Germany, Nazis seized power in Germany, Krupp supported the regime and was one of many German businesses that profited from forced labour under German rule during World War II, slave labor during World War II. Upon the war's end, the head of the company, Alfried Krupp, was tried and convicted as a war criminal for employing prisoners of war, foreign civilians and concentration camp inmates under inhumane conditions in support of the Nazi war effort. Despite being senten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Channel Fleet
The Channel Fleet and originally known as the Channel Squadron was the Royal Navy formation of warships that defended the waters of the English Channel from 1854 to 1909 and 1914 to 1915. History Throughout the course of Royal Navy's history there had been different squadrons stationed in home waters. One of the earliest known naval formations to be based at Plymouth was called the Western Squadron which was the forerunner of the Channel Squadron that was later known as the Channel Fleet. In 1650 Captain William Penn, Commander-in-Chief, was charged with guarding the Channel from Beachy Head to Lands End with six ships. This system continued following the Restoration. It was the start of what was to become a Western Squadron. From 1690 the squadron operated out of Plymouth Dockyard during wartime periods, which was for most of the 18th century and early 19th century. In 1854 The Channel Squadron, sometimes known as the Particular Service Squadron, was established. The Channel Sq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early Middle Ages, medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Kingdom of France, France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the English Navy of the early 16th century; the oldest of the British Armed Forces, UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service. From the early 18th century until the World War II, Second World War, it was the world's most powerful navy. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing and defending the British Empire, and four Imperial fortress colonies and a string of imperial bases and coaling stations secured the Royal Navy's ability to assert naval superior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Railways
British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission, it became an independent statutory corporation in January 1963, when it was formally renamed the British Railways Board. British Railways was formed on 1 January 1948 as a result of the Transport Act 1947, which nationalisation, nationalised the Big Four (British railway companies), Big Four British railway companies along with some other (but not all) smaller railways. Profitability of the railways became a pressing concern during the 1950s, leading to multiple efforts to bolster performance, including some line closures. The History of rail transport in Great Britain 1948–1994#The Modernisation Plan, 1955 Modernisation Plan formally directed a process of dieselisation and Railway electrification in Great Britain, electrification ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Home Guard (United Kingdom)
The Home Guard (initially Local Defence Volunteers or LDV) was an unpaid armed citizen militia supporting the 'Home Forces' of the British Army during the Second World War. Operational from 1940 to 1944, the Home guard, Home Guard comprised more than 1.5 million local volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service, such as those who were too young, too old or medically unfit to join the regular British Armed Forces, armed services (regular military service was restricted to those aged 18 to 41) and those in reserved occupations. Excluding those already in the armed services, the civilian police or other civil defence volunteer organisations, approximately one in five men were Home Guard volunteers. Their primary role was to act as a secondary defence force in their home locality in case of Operation Sea Lion, invasion by the forces of Nazi Germany. The Home Guard were initially ordered to observe, and report back to General Headquarters Home Forces, any airborne or seabor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bekesbourne Aerodrome
Bekesbourne Aerodrome was an airport located at the southeast edge of the village of Bekesbourne, southeast of Canterbury, Kent. It operated from 1916 until 1940, and had both military and civil roles. History World War I The airfield started as RFC Bekesbourne when the Royal Flying Corps The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was the air arm of the British Army before and during the First World War until it merged with the Royal Naval Air Service on 1 April 1918 to form the Royal Air Force. During the early part of the war, the RFC sup ... requisitioned of land in 1916 as an Emergency Landing Ground (ELG). B flight of No. 50 (Home Defence) Squadron moved in, operating Armstrong Whitworth F.K.3 and F.K.8 and Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 and Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.12, B.E.12 aircraft. Very little action was seen. After a German bombing raid on London in 1917, some Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5, S.E.5 aircraft from No. 56 Squadron RAF, No.56 Squadron were brought in bet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dover Harbour
The Port of Dover is a cross-channel ferry, cruise terminal, maritime cargo and marina facility situated in Dover, Kent, south-east England. It is the nearest English port to France, at just away, and is one of the world's busiest maritime passenger ports, with 11.7 million passengers, 2.6 million lorries, 2.2 million cars and motorcycles and 80,000 coaches passing through it in 2017, and with an annual turnover of £58.5 million a year. This compares with the nearby Channel Tunnel, the only fixed link between the island of Great Britain and the European mainland, which now handles an estimated 20 million passengers and 1.6 million trucks per year. The modern port facility features a large artificial harbour constructed behind stone piers and a defensive concrete breakwater. The port is divided into two main sections: the Eastern Docks serve as the main cross-channel ferry terminal, while the Western Docks contain a cruise ship terminal and a yacht marina along with cargo facil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aerial Ropeway
A material ropeway, ropeway conveyor (or aerial tramway in the US) is a subtype of gondola lift, from which containers for goods rather than passenger cars are suspended. Description Material ropeways are typically found around large mining concerns, and can be of considerable length. The COMILOG Cableway, which ran from Moanda in Gabon to Mbinda in the Republic of the Congo, was over in length. The Kristineberg-Boliden ropeway in Sweden had a length of . Conveyors can be powered by a wide variety of forms of energy, such as electricity, engines, or gravity (particularly in mountainous mining concerns, or where running water is available). Gravity-driven conveyors may qualify as zip-lines, as no electricity is used to operate them, instead relying on the weight of carts going down providing propulsion for empty carts going up. Double-rope (bi-cable) ropeways, have a stationary carrying rope and a separate hauling rope that controls their movement. Single-rope (mono-cable) ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Eastern And Chatham Railway
The South Eastern and Chatham Railway Companies Joint Management Committee (SE&CRCJMC),Awdry (1990), page 199 known as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SE&CR), was a working union of two neighbouring rival railways, the South Eastern Railway (England), South Eastern Railway (SER) and London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LC&DR), which operated between London and south-east England. Between 1899 and 1923, the SE&CR had a monopoly of railway services in Kent and to the main English Channel, Channel ports for ferries to France and Belgium. The companies had competed extensively, with some of the bitterest conflicts between British railway companies. Competing routes to the same destinations were built, so several towns in Kent had been served with a similar frequency service by both companies. In places, unfettered competition allowed two stations and services to multiple London termini. It would be a constituent of the Southern Railway (UK), Southern Railway a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
