Isle of Grain

[Fast Track]

Just read an article in the River Thames Society magazine about the Isle of Grain and Port of Tilbury. This area has always given me the impression of Dickensian desolate marshland. However I read the Port of Tilbury Grain terminal currently handles over 2m tonnes of grain wheat and barley.

On reading on about the Isle of Grain there are no passenger services yet this seems to be a major industrial area. All Hallows’ was a potential tourist resort but failed.

Can anyone shed some light on the state of the railway there and it’s future - it seems the port is busy but little human habitation there? Very odd place?

 

[30907]

Can't comment on the Tilbury side, which is much less remote, but I suspect the terminals on the Isle of Grain aren't huge employers.
Grain station, which served the refinery, opened c 1951 and was served by an 8-hourly interval (!) train service diverted off the Allhallows line (which BTW still attracted a fair bit of excursion traffic until closure, sadly before I was old enough to visit).
However, ISTR there is significant housong development planned for the Hundred of Hoo - IF that were oriented to London rather than Chatham that might have railway potential...

 

[John Webb]

There's a good deal of information on the Hundred of Hoo line on the "Disused Stations" website. You could start with http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/p/port_victoria/index.shtml and all the other stations can be accessed from that and each other.

 

[yorksrob]

Went on a railtour along the Grain branch earlier this year. Seemed in pretty good condition.

 

[eastwestdivide]

Looking on Realtimetrains, there seems to be two remaining destinations in use, Grain Foster Yeoman (aggregates), and Grain Oil Terminal (Heathrow aviation fuel), the latter a pretty recent flow of traffic.
For a picture of what's scheduled and what actually runs, try the location Grain (Old Station), which covers both.
Here's yesterday: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/se...19-12-10/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt
I make it 8 freights actually ran yesterday, mostly at night (i.e. those marked N/R = no report at Grain Old station).

Also using a little bit of the branch are aggregate trains to Cliffe (Cliffe Brett Marine on the system)

 

[Taunton]

the Isle of Grain ... This area has always given me the impression of Dickensian desolate marshland.

That's because it is. Dickens' all-time classic novel "Great Expectations" is set right there. Dickens lived when writing it at Higham, and regularly walked across the marshes, crossing the line, to Cooling churchyard. where the bizarre gravestone described in the opening page of the book actually is, and principal character Pip lived alongside. The marshes are so undeveloped you can still see from the air circular water ponds. They are WW2 bomb craters dropped from aircraft, which fell short of London.

 

[eastwestdivide]

I've started a new thread over in "Infrastructure", and I'm asking the mods to move the relevant posts from here.
New thread:

Medway Council gets funding for Hoo/Sharnal Street station

Just been looking at the master plan for a lot of housing development around Hoo St Werburgh, as well as the industrial estate + Amazon warehouse by Kingsnorth. The conclusions of the plan are that: It is highly unlikely to be viable to provide new rail infrastructure along the peninsula and...

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