Further extract from the Leaflet.
THE HIGH SPEED RAILWAY
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FROM BRIGHTON TO NEWHAVEN?
An interesting interview has been given to the Brighton Herald by Mr. E. W. Chalmers Kearney the young engineer who is responsible for the Kearney High Speed Railway. It will be remembered that the Brighton Town Council have granted Mr. Kearney permission to lay an experimental mile of line on the East Brighton Estate. Miss Penelope Lawrence, head of the Roedean College, is so strongly opposed to this permission being granted that she has resigned her position on the Brighton Education Committee.
The immediate scheme is for a single line that, starting on the brow of the hill by the East Brighton Golf Club, will end at a point some 80 yards behind Roedean College grounds. This particular piece of ground has-been chosen because it corresponds in contour to the line the railway will have to take should a projected scheme for carrying the railway under the Thames at Woolwich will be carried out. The Ministry of Transport required some demonstration of the capabilities not the line,and they approved this site on the East Brighton Estate as suitable for the experiment.
Mr. Kearney tells the Herald that this experimental line is only the beginning of a larger scheme for making a railway on his principle from Brighton to Newhaven. The plans show arrangements for a tunnel somewhere under Richmond hill, opening out to the south of Brighton Parish Church. Mr. Kearney confesses that it may be a very long before he will get the powers to carry the railway right into Brighton. But he does hope to bring it close to the town, and so make the journey from Brighton to Newhaven a matter of a few minutes.
The system, it should be understood, is peculiarly well adapted to a hilly country like that between here and Newhaven, working as it does on a switchback principle.
The great obstacle at present is Roedean College.
The Herald questioned Mr. Kearney closely as to the possible objections to this railway. He was emphatic that there can be no objections on the score of either sight, sound, or smell. The railway is a long thin line that will not be conspicuous on the downs. Worked by electricity, it's power station will be small and noiseless, with no smoke or smell. The trains will run practically silently.
"Miss Lawrence," he said, "admits all this. Her objection is simply and solely to having any intrusion on the privacy of " her downs." I told her that the railway would not be half such a nuisance to the as the motor buses that run along the high road." I know" she answered, " but I object to the motor buses being there at all. I would stop them if I could."
Mr. Kearney assured us that he had endevoured to meet the wishes of Miss Lawrence in every way, including even an offer to put the railway on a site more remote from the school. But Miss Lawrence had been adamant, and had successfully brought powerful influence to bear that stopped the alternative scheme he suggested to her. So he could do nothing more than adhere to his scheme on the East Brighton Estate.
Mr. Kearney expressed himself as confident that when experiment has shown how free from objection the railway is, and what an immense boon it will be to Newhaven and Rottingdean, the the present predudices against it will disappear.
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