PRESS RELEASE

Old Soldier En Route for France Again

A hundred year old steam loco which normally works passenger services on the Kent & East Sussex Railway is all set to visit St. Valery on the north coast of France over the weekend of 25th and 26th April. No. 753, a P class tank engine, was built at Ashford Works in 1909 and while still a spritely youngster was on army duty at Boulogne docks during the First World War. No. 753 has made several Channel journeys in recent years, each of these having been to the Baie de Somme Railway which is twinned with the K&ESR. Now, in its centenary year, the loco is off to the Baie de Somme's Fete de Vapeur (Steam Fair) in company with an equally venerable four wheel coach which once worked in Woolwich Arsenal and is reputed to have carried Winston Churchill. K&ESR General Manager Graham Baldwin said "At a time when Britain and France are honouring the last surviving servicemen of the Great War it's appropriate that the Kent & East Sussex should recognise the friendship between our two countries, a friendship which today continues through links such as our twinning with the Chemin de Fer de la baie de Somme."