DOVER MAIN LINE 1844
In Kent the main focus of attention was building a line from London to the coast at Dover. The dominant company tackling this was the South Eastern Railway. They built this line during the period 1838 - 1844, but crucially they were forced to reach London via Redhill, which left the immediate area round Farnborough untouched.
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At the time of inauguration there were two potential rail
pathways south from London, and the Speaker of the House of
Commons had said no further ones would be permitted. The
SER therefore considered routes to Dover from the proposed
London and Southampton Railway line at Wimbledon, or from the
existing London and Greenwich Railway (L&GR) at Greenwich.
The former left London in the wrong direction and then on a roundabout route. The latter provided a useful way for a northern route via Gravesend, Rochester, and Canterbury, except that lengthening the line beyond Greenwich was blocked by opposition from the Admiralty, and this route would involve tunneling through the North Downs. |
The engineer of the new line, William Cubitt, was also engineer of the London and Croydon Railway (L&CR), which planned to use L&GR lines as far as Corbett’s Lane in Bermondsey before turning south towards Croydon. A new connection on this line near to Norwood could provide access to a southerly route to Dover via Tonbridge, Ashford and Folkestone. This was less direct than the northerly route but passed through easier country. It involved one significant 1,387-yard (1,268 m) tunnel through the Shakespeare Cliff near Dover. This was the route first chosen by the SER at its inauguration.
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During Parliamentary discussions on the proposed route of the London and Brighton Railway (L&BR) during 1837, pressure was put on the SER to divert its proposed route so it could also share the L&BR mainline between Jolly Sailor (Norwood) and Earlswood Common, and then travel eastwards to Tonbridge. Under the scheme proposed by Parliament, the railway from Croydon to Redhill would be built by the L&BR but the SER would have the right to refund half the construction costs and own that part of the line between Merstham and Redhill.
The SER gave way to this proposal as it reduced their construction costs, although it resulted in a route 20 miles (32 km) longer than by road, running south for 14.5 miles (23 km) before turning east. It also meant that its trains from London Bridge passed over the lines of three other companies: the L&GR to Corbett's Lane Junction, the L&CR as far as 'Jolly Sailor', and the L&BR to Merstham. These arrangements were to lead to many inter-company tensions over the decades that followed.
The roundabout route meant that the railway did not come anywhere near Farnborough, until yielding to competitive pressure from the London Chatham and Dover railway the South Eastern built its new line via Orpington some decades later.