Sunday 28th September 2025 The Criterion Heritage Centre, Bluetown, Sheerness We’re excited to be organising this event to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of rail passenger travel. There will a selection of talks in the morning of Sunday 28th September 2025, at The Criterion Blue Town, Sheerness, with a bus tour visiting all the key sites…
Celebrating Railway 200 with the Signal Box Cafe at Hollingbourne Station, Sunday 19th October.
Medway’s Life In Miniature On Wednesday 17th September we joined a number of other organisations at Medway Archives Centre to celebrate Railway 200 and Heritage Open Days at the “Medway’s life in miniature” exhibition. Among the other local groups and organisations attending were: Chatham and District Model Railway Club Medway Aircraft Preservation Society The Guildhall…
Celebrating RAIL 200 Across the Isle of Sheppey Bespoke local rail photography exhibitions will be displayed for three weeks from 15th September to 6th October, (with specific opening times and days below) across the museums of: The Criterion Heritage Centre, Sheerness Opening times: The Minster Gatehouse Museum Opening times: The Queenborough Guildhall Museum Opening times:…
Thursday 18th September 2025 The Criterion Heritage Centre, Bluetown, Sheerness We are celebrating the 200th anniversary of rail passenger travel with a music and film night! Come and enjoy some beautiful musical performances at The Criterion Heritage Centre Blue Town, Sheerness, followed by FREE Community Cinema, with the showing of the “The Railway Children Return”…
Rehoming Abandoned Bikes with Maidstone CAN and Making a Difference to Maidstone Earlier this year, Taylor Edwards at Southeastern introduced us to a pile of abandoned bikes in storage at Maidstone West station. In years gone by, these were passed on to the YMCA at Tonbridge, to support a scheme to allow young people to…
Paddock Wood Station’s Birthday Celebrations, 28th August 2025 Railway 200 continues to see us mark our station’s birthdays, bringing Community Rail to the attention of more people in the communities where we work. It was an early start, Southeastern’s Paddock Wood station team wanted to ensure the celebrations could be enjoyed by both their regular…
Ashford Depot Open Day, Sunday 24 August 2025 Southeastern’s Exclusive Railway 200 Depot Open Day celebrated 200 years of the passenger railway in the UK; Southeastern opened the doors to their train maintenance depot in Ashford for one very special day. The unique event was hosted by the Southeastern engineering team. Chris Anthony, Dominic…
Supporting the Muslim Hikers along the North Downs Way, Wye to Canterbury, Sat 16th August 2025 Kent CRP regularly works in collaboration with Kent Downs National Lanscape’s ‘Putting Down Routes’ project, to bring under-represented groups into the Kent Downs, grow sustainable tourism to the area, and extend the typical summer tourist season to all year…
19th July 2025 Queenborough Station & Castle Connections On Saturday 19th July, we came together for a day of activities and celebration to mark Rail 200 (the 200th anniversary of passenger rail travel) and Queenborough Station’s 165th Birthday! Cycle Recycle With thanks to Swale Borough Council for organising Cycle Recycle, there were early queues for…
South Eastern Railway Stakeholder Forum, 15th July 2025 We were delighted to accept an invitation to attend the South Eastern Railway Stakeholder Forum on Tuesday 15th July, to hear updates and announcements from Southeastern and Network Rail about their integrated working group. Please find below a summary of our notes from the meeting. ….
Rail 200 Queenborough Station & Green The Procession On the morning of the 17th July, over 200 pupils from Queenborough Primary School brought along special Rail 200 artwork and took part in a big procession from the Station onto the Green, creating a “200” to mark “Rail 200” and Queenborough Station’s 165th Birthday. Rail 200…
History on the first rail passenger journey 27th September 1825 The story starts in the county of Durham in Northern England. In the valleys of the River Tees and Wear, there was coal, slate, iron ore and lead. These are all very heavy material but worth a lot of money. There was a problem in…
A special Announcement from Southeastern – South Eastern Railway We’re delighted to be able to share that Great British Railways (GBR) has now moved one step closer for passengers in the South East with the formation of a single leadership team accountable for the railway’s performance across track and train. Southeastern and Network Rail Kent…
Train Travel Training and Sustainable Tourism Guided Walk Charing to Lenham, 5 June 2025 Working in collaboration with Kent Downs National Lanscape’s ‘Putting Down Routes’ project, Kent CRP undertook train travel training and a guided this walk on the Kent Downs Way for 9 English for Speakers of Other Languages students and 3 of…
Celebrating Strood Station’s 169th Birthday On Wednesday 18th June we joined Southeastern to celebrate Strood station’s 169th birthday. School groups from St James the Great Academy and laddingford School were treated to free pencils, rulers and other goodies from the Southeastern and Kent Community Rail Partenership stalls. The fun atmosphere continued throughout the afternoon,…
Snodland Station Garden and Allotment – June 2025 Update Today we visited the Snodland allotment site to see the clearance work undertaken by Network Rail in preparation for Five Acre Wood (Snodland) bringing this space into use as an allotment and outdoor learning area from September. We then moved on to undertake some weeding around…
Maidstone’s Big Day Out Rail Ramble, Saturday 14th June 2025 Working in collaboration with Maidstone’s Big Day Out, Kent CRP guided this walk along the river Medway from Wateringbury into the town centre, one of many events taking place that day to celebrate Maidstone’s Big Day Out. At the station another group of around…
Department for Transport confirms our Accredited Community Rail Partnership status. We are delighted to announce that the Department for Transport has renewed their accreditation of the Kent Community Rail Partnership. Accreditation is formal recognition by the DfT that Kent Community Rail Partnership operates to a high standard and that its objectives and activities are supported…
Award for Paws on the Platform An amazing afternoon spent with the wonderful Guide Dog volunteers at their annual award ceremony in Kent on Friday 30th May. Our collaborative Paws on the Platform event highlighting the difficulties partially sighted passengers encounter when travelling by rail achieved second place – well done all!