We took a trip to see how the huge development was progressing at Folkestone harbour railway station

Who remembers the good old days a good Sunday Market and a pound to spend in Rotunda funfair ?

And then some seafood. 

Well them days are gone . But now things are starting to look up as a Victorian-style benefactor in the shape of billionaire Sir Roger De Haan, whose charitable trust has helped regenerate the whole town, including a £7m facelift of the Creative Quarter.

Houses planned to be built on Folkestone seafront

A £5m cash injection from Kent’s economic and business champions the South East Local Enterprise Partnership has helped get this seafront project going, but it is otherwise funded purely from the pockets of Sir Roger, who made his fortune through the sale of the Saga group in 2004.Just over two years ago, outline planning consent was granted for up to a thousand residential units, including beach houses, apartments and town houses, with a range of commercial spaces and leisure facilities designed to serve a new community.The scale of the project is huge, with the refurbished Harbour Arm - re-opened last year 

WELL LETS SEE HOW MPS TAKE

Ashford railway works . A Disused and Abandoned site in New Town Ashford Kent UK

LATE MARCH 2017

Ashford locomotive works was built by the South Eastern Railway on a new 185-acre (75 ha) site in 1847, replacing an earlier locomotive repair facility at New Cross in London.[1] By 1850 over 130 houses had been built for staff (called Alfred Town by the railway but New Town by everybody else),The works employed about 600 people in 1851 increasing to about 950 by 1861, and around 1,300 by 1882.  A carriage and wagon works was opened on an adjacent 32-acre (13 ha) site in 1850.

South Eastern and Chatham RailwayOn 1 January 1899, the railway entered into a working union with the London Chatham and Dover Railway, forming the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR).[5][6] Each antecedent company had its own locomotive works, but Ashford was larger than Longhedge works and so became the principal locomotive works for the new organisation. The latter facility was gradually run down and converted into a subsidiary works.

Southern Railway and British Railways

Following the grouping of the SECR with the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the London and South Western Railway to form the Southern Railway on 1 January 1923, most new locomotive and carriage design and construction was transferred to the more modern facilities at Eastleigh Works. Nevertheless, Ashford continued to operate both building and servicing locomotives and wagons until well after the nationalisation of the railways to form British Railways in 1948.

The locomotive workshops eventually closed on 16 June 1962, the last locomotive to be repaired at Ashford being N class 2-6-0 no. 31400 on 9 June.[9] The wagon works continued for a further two decades[4] producing continental ferry vans, Freightliner vehicles, merry-go-round coal hopper wagons and the Cartic4 articulated car transporter.[10] [8] It became one of BREL's main wagon works, but as trade declined it operated on an ever-decreasing scale until it closed down in 1982