Railways of the South Coast: Dover to Penzance

About Railways of the South Coast: Dover to Penzance

By the ULTIMATE Brighton Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

England’s south coast was opened up by its railways: the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, founded in 1846, Volk’s electric railway on Brighton beach, the miniature main line across Romney Marsh, and in the west Brunel’s line along the sea at Dawlish and over the Tamar to Cornwall.

Follow the railway along England’s south coast and you read the country’s seaside history in steel: lines laid to carry Londoners to the sea, boat trains to France, a tram on stilts through the surf, and in the far west a line that runs right beside the waves.

The Brighton line

The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was established on 27 July 1846 by a merger that included the London and Brighton Railway and the Croydon Railway. For the next three quarters of a century it carried Londoners to the Sussex resorts and ran one of the great cross-Channel routes, from Newhaven to Dieppe: slower than Dover to Calais, but proud, in Brunel University’s archive account, of being the cheapest way across. In the 1930s the Southern Railway electrified the line from London to Brighton, and on 1 January 1933 its all-Pullman electric train, renamed the Brighton Belle in 1934, made the run in about an hour.

There is no single train from Dover to Penzance: take it in stages, and stop.

By the sea, on the sea

On 4 August 1883 the Brighton inventor Magnus Volk opened his little electric railway along the beach, and it is still running. In 1896 he went further, with the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway, whose single car, nicknamed Daddy Long Legs, stood on legs 23 feet tall so it could run through the sea at high tide; it stopped in January 1901.

Steam in the Weald

Inland, the Bluebell Railway keeps steam alive in the Weald, running between Sheffield Park, Horsted Keynes and East Grinstead; in winter it sometimes runs a shorter route, so check before you go.

A main line in miniature

East of Hastings, across the Romney Marsh, runs one of the most charming railways in England: the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, “Kent’s Mainline in Miniature”. The dream of two racing drivers, Captain J. E. P. Howey and Count Louis Zborowski, it opened in 1927 between Hythe and New Romney with one-third-size steam engines, and in 1928 reached Dungeness: 13.5 miles of line beside the sea.

West to Devon: the sea wall

Beyond Exeter the railway meets the sea. The Riviera Line hugs the Exe estuary and then runs along the sea wall at Dawlish and Teignmouth, under red sandstone cliffs, one of the best-loved stretches of railway in England. In February 2014 a storm washed the line away at Dawlish; Network Rail has since built a new, higher sea wall to protect it.

Over the Tamar

At Saltash the railway crosses into Cornwall on Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Royal Albert Bridge, completed in 1859 and still the vital rail link to and from Cornwall. Its two main spans are each 455 feet long, the deck 80 feet above the water; Network Rail refurbished the bridge in the 2010s.

To St Ives and Penzance

The main line ends at Penzance, on Mount’s Bay. The stop before it, St Erth, is the junction for the St Ives Bay Line, one of the most scenic short railways in Britain, which sweeps along the coast past the sands of Hayle Towans and Carbis Bay to St Ives.

Riding it today

There is no single train along the whole coast. From Brighton, East Coastway trains run to Lewes, Eastbourne and Hastings, and on across the Romney Marsh to Ashford International, where you change for Dover, and West Coastway trains to Worthing, Chichester and on towards Portsmouth and Southampton; from there, trains continue west to Exeter, and Great Western trains to Penzance. Plan each leg on the National Rail journey planner, and take it in stages: Rye, Dungeness, Dawlish and St Ives all deserve a night.

Our advice: do the coast in three journeys, not one: Brighton to Dungeness by way of the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch; Brighton to Exeter along the Coastway; and Exeter to St Ives, sitting on the sea side of the train at Dawlish.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Railways of the South Coast: Dover to Penzance before you go.