New Look Teynham Station!

Leading porters Lewis Smith (shown working in the garden) and James Rostron (his helper) earned praise locally for their efforts to beautify Teynham Station. They planted flowers and shrubs at the entrance and made little flower beds on the platforms. With the repainting of the station Teynham Station (on the newly electrified Kent coat line) took on an entirely “new look”.

Looks and sounds a little unfamiliar? The text and the picture were taken from “The Southern Edition of the British Railways Magazine” dated September 1959, kindly supplied to us by David Mann. Note the hedgerow along Lower Road where there are now houses.

Who was the young lady admiring the work of leading porter Mr Lewis Smith in our cover picture? Do you have any stories or pictures of Teynham station as it was, or travelling on the trains around 1960 and before? Please send your pictures and memories to the Parish Clerk.

Bradshaw’s Railway Guide 1866

For those of us who watched the 2011 BBC2 television series of Michael Portillo going around Britain on the train using Bradshaw’s Railway Guide of 1866, it begs the question “Was Teynham Station mentioned in Bradshaw’s Guide?”

Yes it was mentioned, as in the brief entry above from a copy of the guide. East Kent Railway had opened its line from Chatham to Faversham a few years earlier on Friday 26th January 1858 and Teynham was one of the stations served by this railway upon the opening of the line.