Canterbury Bell part 1: Cab view from Hastings to Ashford International, filmed from our preserved Hastings DEMU on Saturday 31 December 2016, during the outward leg of our Canterbury Bell railtour.
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In this video we cover the 28 miles and 65 chains of the Marshlink Line, which is steeply graded at its ends but very flat over the majority of its length as it traverses the Romney Marsh via Rye. This line is unelectrified, and was singletracked in 1979 between Ore and Appledore; but fortunately it has thus far escaped closure. For many years the train service was operated by Hampshire and Oxted DEMU trains closely related to our own Hastings DEMU.
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Video and audio footage are from an unattended unmonitored forwardfacing cabcamera in motor coach 60118 Tunbridge Wells. The railtour began at Eastbourne and ran via Rye and Dover to Faversham.
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0:00 – HASTINGS station
3:27 Mount Pleasant Tunnel
3:55 Ore station
5:10 Ore Tunnel
9:21 Three Oaks station
11:12 Doleham station
13:18 Snailham
17:19 Winchelsea station
20:21 RYE station
31:09 Appledore station
37:14 Ham Street station
48:41 ASHFORD INTERNATIONAL station
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Video, soundtrack and captions © Copyright 2016–2018 Hastings Diesels Limited.
https://www.hastingsdiesels.co.uk/
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Equipment: video and its soundtrack by GoPro Hero3+ camera with suctionmount and extra batteries; processing by Da Vinci Resolve (free).
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In part 2 of this tour we will head due east to Folkestone and Dover Priory, and part 3 will show the remainder of our journey to Canterbury East and Faversham.
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Here is a link to an annotated extract from Network Rail’s Sectional Appendix:
Outward: https://www.dropbox.com/s/27wsjbrkro7...
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Here is a link to the Railways Archive scanned copy of Major Holden's Report on the Appledore Derailment, published in 1982 by the Department of Transport:
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docs...