The Story behind the model
In the beginning …………
At the end of the Great War in 1918, Sir Charlie Robineson was one of the few who returned home unscathed.
He returned to the family home to take over the family estate ‘Ecclestone Manor’ which was on the Sussex/Kent border.
Ecclestone Manor was very much a family estate and was mainly given to arable farming, but also had a large forest and timber business.
During his distinguished service he was one of Royal Engineers who built and maintained the narrow gauge railway behind enemy lines in Belgium.
Sir Charlie’s return of was well timed, as his father, Sir Hugh, was getting on in years and wanted to retire.
Sir Charlie had seen at first hand the benefit that the lightweight narrow gauge railways had on the transportation of men and materials, and he used his many contacts to purchase a load of surplus War Department stock, which included steam locomotives, and the new-fangled petrol Simplex contraptions, as well as a load of wagons and track - all at rock bottom prices.
So, in the early roaring '20s he constructed a narrow gauge system around the estate and the forest to move both produce and timber to the local branch of the LBSCR, which ran just a few miles from the estate boundary.
This was very successful but WW2 meant the estate lost a lot of workers, so the railway closed and the LBSCR closed its local branch. This meant the movement of goods returned to the old methods of horse and cart.
After the Second World War, Sir Charlie’s son took over the estate management, and nothing happened till the mid fifties/early sixties when, with the coming of the preserved railways, it was decided to reinstate the railway and extend it to use the old track bed of the LBSCR to the nearby mainline station.
Extra income could be made from both the tourists in the summer months and delivering the goods to the now local station for onward shipment to market.
And to this day this little railway survives, but is no longer a tourist attraction, as the Health & Safety banned the use of the open coaches.
We see it as it was sometime in the autumn of the 1990s, now with all petrol/diesel motive power, the early steam locomotives having been scrapped as part of the Second World War effort.
The old engine shed survives and is used as a workshop, and in the background we see part of the old estate boiler house which is now used to store and dry wood.
The estate and farm are now completely organic and we see the freshly picked produce arrive at ‘The Shed’ for packing and onward movement by the railway, where it is sent to market in London.
Sir Charlie Robineson the third…….
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