please empty your brain below

This was the location for the finale of last year's series of Hunted. The final extraction point was a rib moored at the jetty adjacent to the station.
The platform at Swale is the length it is to accommodate the two direct trains a day to and from Victoria, which are rather longer than just two cars.
The direct trains are timetabled to stop at all the other stations on the Sheerness branch, but not at Swale.
I thought it looked like the Hunted place! Thank you for confirming.
That was a great final episode, I still have it recorded.
I've run a few marathons along the Saxon Shore Way. Just thought you'd like to know.

http://www.saxon-shore.com/
I wonder if it was built to take full-length trains in case it is ever needed to handle a repeat of the "SS Gyp" incident of 1922, when "Kingsferry Bridge South Halt", as it was then known, had to serve as the railhead for the whole island.

Did the Victoria services ever call there?
I'd say the cause of the 130 vehicle pile-up was people driving far too fast for the prevailing conditions. Installing streetlights would have made precious little difference.
IslandDweller - It was. They always speed over the bridge and got caught out on this occasion.
Sorry, but the best thing about Sheppey is leaving it which is why they speed....
A good post about a fascinating area. Ridham dock is in use, but far from bustling. It looks like one of those enterprises only hanging on by its fingernails, because no-one can be bothered to close it. I'd agree with Island Dweller about the street lights, though perhaps some fancy matrix signs saying "Fog" might have helped. Or a 50 mph limit over the bridge, except that it would probably be ignored.
It was not only the speeding vehicles which suffered in the pile-up. You can drive at a sensible speed for the conditions, stop when the road is obstructed in front of you, and then be rammed from behind by a vehicle with a less sensible driver.
'Liminal nirvana.' Chapeau, DG.
It would be interesting to know how often the bridge is actually raised on an average day.
I was on board the MV Balmoral last summer when it completed a circumnavigation of the Isle of Sheppey.

It is apparently the largest vessel that can do this.

I have photos and a brief video of the bridge being raised for us just after a train went over it.

According to the White Funnel website, the same trip will be available from Southend Pier and Chatham on June 12th.
Phone phreaks will remember that Sittingbourne's area code has its roots in the Swale. STD codes (as they were originally known) started with 0 followed by two letters to help make them memorable, so something starting 0SI might have been expected.

However, Sittingbourne lost out to places such as Sheffield (0SH2), Rhyl (0RH5) and Shepton Mallet (0SH9), so it had to be content with 0SW5. This morphed into 0795 when lettered dials were abolished in the late 1960s, finally becoming 01795 on PhONEday on 16 April 1995.
I’m quite a fan of ‘desolate open marsh’ and so have used Swale halt quite a few times over the years. It actually serves a purpose as the nearest station for visitors to Elmley RSPB Reserve. I recall that it was, in the late-1990s, a Request Stop. But it is now deemed so important that everything stops there.










TridentScan | Privacy Policy