Crab & Winkle Line railway
Opened 1904 · closed 1951 · nothing remains
The station was here – on Station Road, which was still called Chapel Road when the line opened. The Kelvedon and Tollesbury Light Railway, known to everyone as the Crab and Winkle Line, arrived in Tollesbury on 1 October 1904. The opening took place in steady rain, with no formal ceremony and no bunting – except at the King’s Head, which decorated itself and laid on a meal. One hundred and twenty guests made the first run from Kelvedon; the journey of eight miles through Tiptree and the Tolleshunts took forty minutes and cost ninepence.
The line was built under the Light Railways Act 1896, which allowed cheaper construction to lower engineering standards. There was no signalling – unnecessary, since the line possessed only one locomotive. There were no through tickets to mainline stations. Some of the smaller halts were served by old coach bodies left beside the track. Maximum speed was 25mph, dropping to 10mph through villages and at ungated level crossings. It was not, by any measure, a sophisticated railway.
What it carried was more interesting than how it ran. Fruit for Wilkin's jam factory at Tiptree. Fish to Billingsgate. London yachtsmen arriving for their boats at Woodrolfe Creek. A 1.75-mile pier extension was added in 1907, jutting out into the Blackwater to allow ocean-going vessels to berth at any state of the tide – a pier that would, its promoters hoped, turn Tollesbury into a rival to Harwich. It never happened. The pier extension closed in 1921. The pier was blown up during the Second World War as an anti-invasion measure.
The main line survived longer. On 5 May 1951, over 430 people crowded onto the last train from Kelvedon – decorated with streamers, accompanied by fog detonators and football rattles. Maldon's MP Tom Driberg rode on the footplate as honorary fireman. On the firebox, someone had chalked: “Born 1904. Died 1951.” On the bunker: “There be many a poor soul have to walk.” A black coffin was laid on Tiptree platform. Someone chalked on the side of the engine: “Crab and Winkle, sorry to say, you died because you did not pay.”
The rails were pulled up. The station buildings went. The route is fields and footpaths now.