The "East Kent Light Railways" (official title) was originally conceived before the First World War as a network of lines in East Kent linking at least nine proposed collieries in the newly discovered Kent coalfield to a new coal port at Richborough Port. However, most of the collieries were either flooded out or abandoned before reaching production, and the EKLR only served one productive mine. Richborough Port was a failure, and the EKLR became a truly rural railway with a heavy coal flow for a few miles only at one end between the working colliery at Tilmanstone and the SECR main line at Shepherdswell.