The man who gave us the Railmotor
There’s a new housing development off Maidstone Road in Paddock Wood which Clarus Homes, the developer, has named The Hop Pocket.
It’s a reminder that the town was once key to Kent’s extensive hop-growing industry.
It’s importance was as a rail hub, both in offering growers a means to transport their harvest to brewers in London, and as the method by which thousands of Londoners would arrive each summer to work in the county’s hop gardens.
In 1892 a talented young assistant engineer, Holman Fred Stephens, helped build a new branch line to serve the industry, which ran from Paddock Wood to Hawkhurst, stopping at Horsmonden, Goudhurst and Cranbrook.
The line closed in 1961 with the last train running on Sunday, June 11. Today it is affectionately remembered as The Hop Pickers Line, and a heritage group exists to remind us all via a series of information panels of the route once taken by the 11-mile track.
Two years after the line had opened, Holman Stephens qualified as a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, which allowed him to build railways in his own right. He went on to build 16 rail and tramways in Kent and Sussex.
With his company based first in Priory Road and then in Salford Terrace in Tonbridge, he was more commonly known as HF Stephens; to his close friends he was “Holly” and to his staff he was “The Colonel.”
The latter nickname stemmed from his service during the First World War.
Already 46 at the outbreak, he was considered too old to send to the front, but Stephens, who had been in the Army Reserve since 1896, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and put in charge of the home defence of the Thames estuary.
Stephens’ company was helped by the Light Railways Act of 1896 which allowed local lines to be built without the stringent restrictions previously required - and thus more cheaply.
The first such line he built was the Rother Valley Railway from Headcorn to Robertsbridge. It opened in 1900 and carried its last passengers in 1954. Though joyfully since then, a group of steam train enthusiasts have been able to re-open a 10.5-mile section of the track, between Tenterden and Bodiam, as the Kent and Sussex Railway, which is now a popular tourist destination.
Because the light railways were generally small local branch lines without a heavy customer base, their proprietors were always battling to keep them viable, especially from the 1930s onwards when they began to get serious competition from the motor car.
Stephens, looking to reduce costs, had been among the first to see the potential of the internal combustion engine. As early as 1911 he had proposed using “an oil motor on a bogie passenger car.”
By 1921, he tried his first petrol-powered locomotive on his Weston Clevedon and Portishead line, but the hand-built one-off was too expensive.
So he adopted a WolseleySiddeley car chassis as a rail bus trying it out on the Rother (Kent and East Sussex) line.
He was the only British rail operator to attempt such an innovation, though some French and American operators were experimenting with similar ideas.
It was not a huge success, but Stephens continued to experiment, adopting a oneton lorry chassis, that was part of the Ford Model T family, to take a bus body. So that the train could be reversed, he used two in back-to-back pairs, with the first set running on the Rother line in late 1922.
In September 1923, Stephens wasabletoboasttothe Commercial Motor magazine: “I have nine small steam railways under my control and am trying several forms of motor trains. In a previous experiment I learnt, to my sorrow, that it is cheaper to have a car at each end than to put in a reverse gear.”
He said: “The motive units I am now using are the much despised one-ton Fords; we chose this type, as we can always get spares without delay and for no other reason.”
Fitted with pressed steel disc wheels, the Railmotors, as they were known, initially retained the mudguards, lights and bonnet of the standard lorry, but gradually these items were removed, and they acquired much more the appearance of a London Underground train.
Stephens died in 1931, but his Railmotors remained in service until 1937.