Swanscombe Cement Works and its Railways

Chris Down   Industrial Locomotive Society 2022

Hardback 424 pages, 375 photos  £36

Swanscombe cement works operated for nearly 165 years, one of the longest-lived cement works in the world and, for many decades, also one of the largest. For a hundred years from about 1826 until 1929 it employed a unique narrow gauge railway using outside-flanged wheels, with over thirty steam locomotives, many also unique. When modernised in the 1927-29 period, its new standard gauge railway was one of the busiest and most efficient in the industry. This remarkable book tells the story of these railways, in the context of the history of the factory as a whole and the lives of those who worked here.