We now have a main webpage, which allows you to easily select one of our websites. There are now 4 main websites about the railways of Brighton, covering The Kemptown Railway, The Devil's Dyke Railway, Hollingdean and the Abattoir, Brighton Station and the Railway Works.These can all be found at our new "hub":
There are also a great deal of other locations described and investigated as we have expanded our scope of operations and we are now starting to diversify into railway locations outside the Brighton area and also into Urban Exploration. Recent outings have included West Grinsted, The Lewes to Uckfield Railway and Hellingly Lunatic Asylum and we have other visits and locations in our sights!
************** Work will shortly begin on a new sister web project called "ghost-of" and this will concentrate on Urban Exploration issues and visits to abandonned buildings, whilst "ghost-trains" will be focused solely on railways. A linkwill be published once the project has some kind of embrionic structure and in line with all other ghost-trains projects, will be ongoing asnew material comes to light and new locations are visited.
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Welcome to the Ghost-Trains website dedicated to all things to do with the Kemptown Railway.
On this website, you will find a definitive and exhaustively researched history of the Branch Line across Brighton, from the laying of the first brick of the Lewes Road Viaduct, right up to what isn't there today!
Don't forget that you can view descriptions of photographs at any time by double-clicking on the photo. This will also show comments that have been posted about the subject.
If you have visited this site before, thank you for coming back! The site is constantly evolving and (hopefully) improving and for those of you who leave me useful comments and information... please keep it up! It all helps and I do read every comment so please don't be disheartened.
***** This site is work in progress, so items may be incomplete, *****
have spelling mistakes or weird spacing. It is constantly updated so please keep checking it out!
"My God! What have I created??!" A bloody monster, that's what!
I am finding it harder and harder to believe that this project started out as "just a bit of fun" and now it is growing by the day into a monsterous project that I am now (and I freely admit) struggling to stay on top of.
In the space of just a few months, the project went from a microsoft word97 based thesis to a website about the Kemptown Railway. In the 2 months after that, Brighton Works was born and Hollingdean was started.
In November 1998, our first outing paved the way for a third website about the Devil's Dyke Railway and it just sort of escalated from there.
Now almost a year on already (it seems only yesterday, but the first website went live on 23rd June 2008), things have mushroomed beyond all recognition:
We now have 4 members to the core team and we are frequently joined on our investigations by a deeply committed group of individuals. There is an ever increasing fan base who appear to log into our sites on a seemingly daily basis (this Kemptown site alone is getting an average of 113 hits a month - not at all bad for an amateur operation by anyones book!).
And just when I thought that things couldn't get any more manic: things suddenly get.......
even better!
We now have a dedicated named web domain, called "ghost-trains.com", which unifies and links all the aspects of railway history we have been working on so far, along with some other interesting projects which showed worrying signs of our diversifying.
We have recently paraken of an outing to Hellingly Mental Asylum, a vast empty and abandonned victorian self contained community, 3 times the area of Churchill Square shopping centre. This may not, in itself, appear that suggestive of any kind of diversifivation, but for me it means that we are slowly realigning ourselves to become an urban exploration group.
The implications of this are unbelievable: there are a huge array of abandonned buildings around Sussex, all with their own unique character and stories to tell.
So... This is the plan. I'm going to create a whole new project which will eventually run in parallel with ghost-trains as a sister project. "ghost-of", as I plan to call it, will cover the urban exploration of buildings, whereas "ghost-trains" will continue in it's current capacity, relating primarily to Brighton's lost railway installations, but also a good variety of locations outside the Brighton Area: for example Lewes and it's railways, Ardingly and West Grinsted all have remarkable histories and very little to show of them.
All this means one truly awesome thing. That ghost-trains can only get bigger and better. As we rapidly approach the one year mark, I am wondering what new heights this project will attain in the next 12 months?
One things's for certain, though. It will be like no other ghost train I've ever ridden on before.
This photo shows Melbourne Street shortly before the Eastern end of the viaduct was cleared in about 1972. I both love and hate this photo because while it has filled a gap in my knowledge, it has also shown up some mistakes in my research.
I thought that the majority of Enterprise Point was built on the embankment of the East end of the viaduct AFTER it was demolished, and yet, here it is bright as a bell with the lovely viaduct arcing gracefully past it. I think, looking at this photo, that the Eastern end of the viaduct goes through where the electrical substation is in Melbourne Street (I'm sure I've mentioned this in the write-up, can someone check this for me?)
The other good thing about this photo is that it confirms that there may be remnants of the brick pier in the confines of Cover's Yard (just behind the building in the middle of the photo). I also thought that Cover's might have been built once the viaduct had been demolished, again this photo has disproven that. It's a fabulous photo though.
I should point out that I got this photo from the Regency Society (they stamp their name on everything, whether it's theirs or not - they copy stuff from previous archives which I think is double standards) but it should be viewed here only in the context of illustrating site history. Please don't share this picture because they are getting wise to this!
Hello Kemptown Fans! I am excited! I am REALLY excited! here's why...
My good friend and colleague Mr. Nick Phillips has been a close collaborator on this site since the very beginning and was fortunate enough to witness the last ever rail outing on the Kemp Town Line before it closed down in 1971. He agreed some weeks ago now to produce a record of his memories of the day and I am delighted to say that Nick's recollections have a page all of their very own! You can read all about Nick's adventures in the page of the same title, elsewhere on this website. Truly a great day for Kemp Town!
This amazing and very rare Edwardian photo shows the HartingtonRoadBridge as viewed from the road looking up the road towards its junction with Elm Grove. The path that lead to the Halt joined the pavement just in front of the bridge on the right hand side. Sadly, the lovely railings are not there today. A modern day view of Hartington Road is seen below, taken from the opposite side of the road. The bridge would have been behind where the white van is on the right hand side of the road.
Okay, guys! Let's knock ourselves out. This is another way to present comments, queries and anecdotes on the site. It's been a real blast for me to find so manypeople who are all on the same wavelength.
It's been quite a journey for me turning a monsterous 2gB thesis into a viable website. My computer bench at home is a mass of paperwork containing flow diagrams, code instructions, notes and all manner of hastily scribbled heiroglyphics! There is still a huge amount of info still to sort out and on top of that, the original thesis is still expanding because they haven't finished OneBrighton yet and I keep finding new bits to include. I just can't help myself. Still, it stops me mugging old ladies...
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