The following account is from "The Railway Companion" and was on the Crab and Winkle Line Trust web-site.
"The writer on one or two occasions, having been detained in Whitstable until darkness has come on, has been highly delighted with his journey and would recommend to those seeking novelty, to await a similar pleasure. To be sure the way is somewhat dreary until the inclined plane from Whitstable is passed: but here you meet with a lively companion - the locomotive engine - which being attached to the train, presently moves along at an incredible pace. Now you are all life; the engine proceeds with a loud roaring noise, as the steam is admitted into its numerous chambers; while in its progress balls of red-hot coke escape from the furnace, giving out a most intense light.Arrived at Bog's Hole, your fiery conductor leaves you; darkness has now completely enveloped the scene; the guides therefore light up their flambeaux. Having arrived at the last engine house (at Tyler Hill), the train proceeds with great ferocity down the inclined plane, probably at the rate of 30 miles an hour, and at one dash, as it were, enters the gloomy cavern, which we have before described as the tunnel. The noise is so great that the interchange of words is useless; not a syllable can be heard; but the vivid glare of the torches, thrown up against the arch, is sufficiently attractive. You look up, and behold - not to the numerous bricks as they ordinarily appear but a continuation of white unbroken lines, with alternate stripes of black so straight that no mathematical process could delineate them with greater accuracy.Emerging from this tunnel, for reader, you have not been more than a minute in it, the noise is quickly and suddenly hushed into comparative silence; and in the brief space of a minute and a half more, the journey is completed. In all the excursions we have made, and they are not 'few nor far between,' it is only due to the officers, engineers and others belonging to the company, to state that every attention is paid; civility is the order of the day; and the comfort of the passengers well observed."
Not all the passengers enjoyed the experience. According to a letter in the local press, one traveller wrote: 'When we had proceeded halfway through, a feeling of suffocation became perceptible increasing so fearfully, that had the tunnel been twice the length, I feel confident I should have hardly have got through alive'. This writer walked back to Canterbury.
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Dec 2005