In photos: Return to Folkestone Harbour disused railway station

Eighteen years after I fist visited the now-disused Folkestone Harbour railway station, I returned last weekend to see how the place has been transformed into a bustling tourist attraction.

Where steam engines once roared to meet ships taking passengers to Boulogne and Calais, a sort of mini High Line has been created, flanked by wild flowers.

The station was once part of the world’s first international rail-sea-rail link, linking London to Paris in 12 1/2 hours.

Folkestone continued to serve the Venice Simplon Orient Express until 2009 before formal closure of the line in 2014.

The official website tells some of the station’s stories:

During the First World War, the station was given over to use for troops and supporting freight. So many soldiers left from Folkestone Harbour that it became known as the ‘gateway to the trenches’.

An estimated 9,253,652 British officers and men, 537,523 allied troops, and 846, 919 Red Cross and other workers passed through. More than one million tonnes of freight was also processed.

A visitors’ book kept by the Harbour Arm’s Mole Cafe, which served teas to those soldiers and statesmen about to board boats to the Front, records the signatures of 42,000 men and women – including Winston Churchill and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Folkestone also welcomed around 116,000 Belgian refugees, approximately 15,000 staying in the town.

The station has many more stories to tell from its 170 year history: the First Great Train Robbery of 15th May 1855, when gold bound for France was stolen from the London to Folkestone train, was discovered to have been an inside job involving a harbour employee who had copied carriage keys; Queen Victoria made her last foreign visit via Folkestone, travelling to Boulogne on 11th March 1899; and in December 1915, infamous spy Mata Hari was apprehended by the Secret Intelligence Service while attempting to board a ship to France.