I’ve always wanted to visit Dungeness (or ‘barren place by the sea’ as I’ve known it to be!) since seeing some footage on tv a while back, my folks have also been keen to go here but it’s always been an awkward journey to get to in the first place ~ it’s a long drive (can’t really do this on a train in a day), plus there is no ‘standard’ trainline to reach Dungeness, you have to take a special 15-inch gauge train, known as the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway that was opened in 1927 and was also used during World War II to transport troops to and from Dungeness. So for my birthday this year we decided to take a trip to Dungeness to see what we could see!
As well as the photos I snapped there’s a short video of the steam train ride plus a unusual find, a Sound Mirror…
The 15-inch gauge steam train we’re getting, No.5 Hercules on the turntable
Last minute checks
Leaving Hythe station
Old station signs at Romney station
Arriving at the end of the line you start to see these wooden beach houses
Shingles, beach houses and not much else – the stark desertness of this place is what makes it attractive
Another custom built beach house
Hercules at the end of the line
Steam engine brass controls
Welcome to Dungeness
Close-up of the old lighthouse (decommissioned in 1961)
Climbing up the inside of the old lighthouse (Over three million bricks were used to build it!)
Special coloured lenses that used to be in placed in the lantern room at the the top of the lighthouse
Close-up of those lenses
These final steps to the lantern room are damn steep!
The lantern room, great views of Dungeness from here
The inner workings of the lanterns
View from the top of the lighthouse, the ‘lantern room’ as it’s called, the building you can see is Dungeness station and you can make out the round train track too
This is the current working lighthouse built in 1960
Not sure why the sea has two different colours but hopefully this is not due to the nuclear power station!
Dungeness nuclear power station (as seen from the top of the old lighthouse
Oh hi there Dad, looking up at me from the bottom of the old lighthouse (think he had enough of the windy weather up there!)
The gauge train coming into Dungeness station
One more of those beautiful beach houses which I saw on the train journey out of Dungeness
No.12 J.B. Snell, a diesel locomotive
Part of a long trek to see the sound mirrors below
I saw this on Google maps and had to find it! a sound mirror (a early warning system for Britain to detect enemy aircraft during WW1)
