Foster Yeoman Terminal
Isle of Grain; TOPS Code: ''IG''
The site at the very
end of the line across the Hoo Peninsula has had no less than three different
uses. When the SER originally commissioned the boat traffic route on 11th
September 1882, services terminated at Port Victoria, a single-platform station
perched upon a 615 foot-long wooden pier head at the south eastern extremity of
the Isle of Grain. Passenger services continued to visit this bleak outpost
until 11th June 1951, a then new island platform affair, just under one mile
further inland, being in use thereafter. By this time, the original Port
Victoria pier station had been fully closed for two decades, and a rather meagre
wooden single platform face had been provided on terra firma, complete with a
timber shelter.
The provision of a new station at Grain in 1951, combined with the closure of
the spur to Port Victoria, acknowledged the arrival of a major corporation: that
of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The concern had established a huge
oil-refining complex at the tip of the Hoo Peninsula, and the decision was taken
to focus all passenger facilities on a new dedicated station site convenient for
refinery workers. Explained in depth in both
Grain Crossing and
Grain Refinery
sections, the refinery station was short-lived, for its passenger services
ceased in conjunction with the closure of the Allhallows-on-Sea line, the last
trains running on 3rd December 1961. In the meantime, the Port Victoria spur had
been swallowed up within the refining complex, having become an elongated siding
since its 1951 closure to passenger traffic. From 1983 onwards, British
Petroleum (which had evolved from the ‘’Anglo-Iranian’’ name) began to wind down
its operations. This began with the cessation of oil refining; it had become
more convenient to import the already refined product from the United States.
Deliveries of refined oil to Grain continued, and this still generated rail
freight traffic, but the scaling down of operations saw numerous sidings in the
vicinity become surplus appendices of a once huge complex, the Port Victoria
spur being one of these. However, yet another new lease of life for this line
was soon to be on the horizon, and produce an alternate traffic of daily freight
flows.
On 12th February 1986, the British and French Governments signed the ''Fixed
Link Treaty'' in Canterbury, which formally authorised the Channel Tunnel
construction programme. This had been preceded on 5th July of the previous year
by the forming of ‘’Translink JV’’ by five British companies with interests in
the project, and on 16th July by the formation of ‘’Transmanche GIE’’ by five
French concerns. Subsequently, on 18th October 1985, these two consortiums
merged, producing the Anglo-French engineering group ‘’TransManch Link’’ (TML).
TML had the single, most significant role in the programme: to build the tunnel
under the English Channel. The company set the ball rolling in its operations by
initiating the construction of a large concrete works out on the Isle of Grain,
occupying former territory of the oil refinery, after the signing of the Fixed
Link Treaty. This was designed to manufacture concrete components, which would
be transported by rail to the colliery at Shakespeare Cliff for use in lining
the Channel Tunnel. Formally deemed complete by ceremony on 23rd March 1988, TML’s works at Grain covered an approximate area of 735,150 metres˛, and in
addition to consisting of a large open-air storage area for completed concrete
cast segments, was host to four large warehouse structures at its southern end,
each measuring some 37 metres by 106 metres. Incorporated within the concrete
works site was a gravel terminal, operated by aggregate firm Foster Yeoman. It
was this gravel works which was set around the original Port Victoria spur, but
by no means was it a genuine quarry, it merely being a storage area. The
terminal here was instead supplied by the remote Glensanda ‘’Super Quarry’’ in
Morven Lismore, on Scotland’s West Coast, which was opened by Foster Yeoman in
1986 as Europe’s largest coastal quarry. Glensanda lacked both rail and road
access, the site being situated high up in the Scottish Hills, thus all
aggregate traffic had to be shipped out by sea. The terminal on the Isle of
Grain received (and continues to) two million tonnes of stone each year, all by
sea, partly acting as the supplier of the adjacent TML works. When the aggregate
was unloaded from vessels, it was conveyed along a 151 metre-long pier to the
main site, and subsequently washed and screened at the terminal before being
sold on for commercial use.
The Channel Tunnel was complete by 1994, it formally being opened on 4th May of
that year. TML’s task of building the tunnel was complete and consequently, this
consortium disbanded, the operation of the railway being the responsibility of
August 1986-formed Eurotunnel. The concrete works on the Isle of Grain ceased
operation: the outdoor concrete segment storage area was absorbed into the
1990-opened Thamesport complex, and used for stacking containers. The four
aforementioned large warehouses were retained, and Foster Yeoman continues to
operate the aggregate terminal around the original Port Victoria spur.
11th October 1994
On 11th October 1994, Dutch-liveried Class 33 No. 33002 is seen at the eastern most extremity of the line across the Hoo
Peninsula. The locomotive is depicted within the aggregate terminal of Foster Yeoman, awaiting its wagons to be loaded.
Locomotive No. 33001 had been scrapped in March 1989, leaving No. 33002 as the oldest surviving example of the type
in existence. The latter managed to last in private EWS ownership for a year, being withdrawn in February 1997. The
locomotive finally found a permanent home in preservation at the South Devon Railway, arriving there in January 2005.
The red buffer stops can just be seen emerging from behind the rear of the formation, the track thereafter to the former
Port Victoria site having since been lifted. The derelict wooden struts of Port Victoria pier are still very much in existence:
they are positioned out of view in the above picture, to the left of the jetty seen in the background. David Glasspool Collection
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