Saturday September 27 marked the 200th anniversary of the first passenger railway in the UK, a day that changed the world. On that date, the Stockton and Darlington Railway held its inaugural journey with passengers. The press were there en masse and people travelled from all over the country to line the track and marvel at this feat of imagination, engineering and technology. Since then the railways have grown and shrunk, been nationalised and privatised and have created a new breed of traveller, “the commuter”. Rye station sees an estimated 300,000 travellers pass through every year.
Rye sits on the Marshlink line, a branch line that opened in 1850. In its early years the rail carried freight and, when the siding to Rye Harbour was built, blue boulders from the beach (used to make china glazes) were loaded outside the William the Conqueror pub and taken up to the pottery towns in Staffordshire.
A group of local poets, The Rye Harbour Writers celebrated the event and the culmination of a six-month long project, funded by Southern Railway, operators of the Marshlink line, with a poetry reading from their anthology The Station Poems. Nine poets read their work at St Mary’s Centre on Friday September 26, exploring ideas prompted by travel, including migration and departure and touching on topics including evolution, history, refugees, love and longing.
Rye town resident Nick Russell read Rye Harbour: Gateway to the World. His poem was a personal celebration of the fact that we still have a rail line at Rye despite being targeted under Dr Beeching’s dreaded mass closure of stations in the mid 1960s. Nick’s father and a group of rail supporters managed to persuade their local MP to join the fight. After what was described as “an impassioned speech” in parliament, Dr Beeching’s axe was stayed and Rye kept its railway.
“We are incredibly grateful to Paul Bromley, our Marshlink Community Rail Line Officer and to his colleagues at Southern,” SC Morgan said. “They have supported us through the whole process, from the funding application, to helping organise our poetry book giveaway on the Hastings to Ashford trains and managing the practicalities of our online poetry competition.”
If you’ve been inspired by the railway and feel prompted to try writing a poem the competition runs until midnight on October 31, 2025. There are categories for under and over 18s and the winners will have their poems turned into posters and shown in an exhibition at Rye station in January 2026. To enter simply go to: www.southeastcrp.org/write-on-track/
Image Credits: SC Morgan , Jeff Grice .