Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

TO BE FORMATTED

ANNALS OF DOVER.
SECTION THREE.
THE PASSAGE.
VI. THE RAILWAYS AND THE PASSAGE.

The London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company,
in bringing their Hne to Dover, reckoned on making the
cross-Channel passenger service a source of profit to their
undertaking. They secured the Dover and Calais Mail
contract in 1863, and, with it, the passenger traffic, which at
once put the newly-formed railway in keen competition with
the South Eastern Railway Company. The S.E. Company
had their own harbour and steam packets at Folkestone, where
they had already secured a well-established cross-Channel
traffic, for although the sea route to Boulogne was longer,
the journey beyond to Paris was shorter. Two years later
the two Companies entered into a Continental agreement,
by which all the railway receipts, attributable to the Channel
Passage, along all parts of their systems between Margate
and Hastings, were pooled, and divided in agreed proportions
between the two Companies, depriving Continental travellers
of any benefit that might have arisen from competition.

In the year 1863, when the Railway Company took
over the Passage, the number of passengers was 123,053.
It will be interesting, later, to compare that annual total
with the increased number after the flight of nearly half a
century ; but it will be more significant to notice the decrease
of the annual total to 108,103, in 1870, five years after the
Continental agreement had been brought into force. If
natural causes had operated, there would have been the
same steady increase in the Dover and Calais passengers
as in preceding years; but the fact was the ill-matched pair
of Railway Chairmen, before the ink of their agreement was
dry, began to devise means of evading it by securing, on
each side, the large.st share of Continental traffic for their
own lines. Naturally, the South Eastern Company would
do their best for their own harbour at Folkestone, in spite
of the fact that the London and Chatham would take a
share of the pool ; but the London and Chatham, having no
proprietary interest in Dover Harbour, diverted a part of
their Continental traffic at a point of their line beyond the



l6o ANNALS OF DOVER

limits of the Continental agreement, by a branch line from
Sittingbourne to Queenborough, and thence by a line of
steam packets to Flushing. This project was followed by
two counter-moves by the South Eastern Company — one to
open a new route via Port Victoria, near Queenborough ; and
the other to build a large and attractive station just beyond
the limits of Folkestone at Shorncliffe. These devices to
get outside the Continental agreement were productive of
little profit to the Railway Companies, and led to expensive
litigation. The Flushing route proved to be only a " side
show," the London and Chatham Company soon coming
to the conclusion that the Dover route was their main stay.
Railway rivalries and diversions in the " Seventies " had
kept down the annual total of the Dover and Calais passengers
to 197, 916, but as soon as the London, Chatham and Dover
Railway Company made up their minds to make the most
of Dover, the passengers increased, the annual total in 1888
being 235,695 ; and by the end of the " Eighties " the annual
total touched 300,000; the year 1889 seeing an increase of
nearly 1,000 passengers a week.



XH£ PASSAGE l6l