Reply To: Aylesford Paper Mills – Early view of East Mill

Hello, I’ve just joined having seen this topic in a search for photos of rail traffic in and out of the mill.

Those photos above that I’m able to see are part of a set, my brother who was on the decommissioning team for Euroliner in East Mill was able to scan them and I have copies. They were used in a video called I think ‘Mill on the Medway’ which was shown on TVS about 20 years ago.

My interest, apart from having worked in the mill (East and West) in the late 70s and early 80s, lies in the depiction of the narrow gauge railways in this series of photos, used extensively by the contractors, to move spoil from excavations and to bring in concrete from the Winget mixing plant on site. The main reservoir in East mill, known as the ballast pit, was the source of the gravel used for the concrete.

Due to the railway content I have uploaded some of these photos to RMweb, with some commentary (some conjectural).

The second and third photos above show some of the narrow gauge track in place, and in the second you can see a standard gauge wagon (LNWR low sided open) on the temporary std gauge siding installed across the end of the machine house. Walmsley’s was at Bury, so the LNWR wagon presumably brought machine parts in.

The narrow gauge appears to be 2′ gauge, and given that the wooden hutted encampment was of WW1 military surplus origin, it’s most likely that the NG was also military surplus. There’s some insights given by other RMweb members on that website.

Seeing the machine basements in the photos above brings back memories of inspecting for starch leaks under 2 and 3 after the rebuilds – 2 was fairly clean and new, 3 had been converted 10 years or so earlier and was somewhat squalid, though you could walk up under the dryer felt runs from the size press tanks, 2’s ‘pit’ was rather full of ventilation ducting which made the crew’s job of removing oil soaked broke a nasty job during planned shuts.

One day I’ll get around to completing writing down some of my recollections, maybe they will be of interest?

I’ve also got some photos (poor quality) of the installation of WM no 8 boiler chimney, demolition of WM boiler house (1-5), and Hornblower shunting the last chlorine tanker off site.