London, Chatham and Dover Railway

The London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) was a British pre-grouping railway formed on 1 August 1859 by the renaming of the East Kent Railway. Its system ran from Victoria, Holborn Viaduct and Blackfriars to Chatham, Dover, Margate and Ramsgate, paralleling the existing South Eastern Railway through Kent and competing intensely with it for the Continental traffic.

The LCDR was always the smaller and financially weaker of the two Kent companies. Its locomotive engineering was carried out at Longhedge Works, Battersea, under William Kirtley (Locomotive Superintendent 1874–1898) and others. Kirtley's M3 Class 4-4-0 of 1891 worked the company's Continental boat trains.

The LCDR's competition with the SER was so destructive to both companies that on 1 January 1899 they entered a 'Managing Committee' working union as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. The two companies retained their separate legal identities until the 1923 Grouping when the SECR (and with it the LCDR's residual identity) became part of the Southern Railway.