London, Chatham and Dover Railway

The London, Chatham and Dover Railway was a railway company in south-eastern England, created on 1 August 1859 when the East Kent Railway was renamed under its own act of Parliament. Its lines ran through London and northern and eastern Kent, forming a significant part of the Greater London commuter network, and the company existed until 1922, when its assets were merged with those of other companies to form the Southern Railway. The company was frequently in financial difficulty, going bankrupt in 1867 amid intense competition with the rival South Eastern Railway, and in 1898 the two companies agreed to work their lines as a single system known as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway while remaining legally separate. Despite its poor reputation for punctuality and carriage stock, the company was notably early to adopt the Westinghouse air brake and the Sykes lock and block signalling system, giving it an excellent safety record.