A popular attraction needs to raise £30m over the next decade to keep facilities up to scratch - but insists it is not in danger of closing.

Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (RH&DR) – which has one-third full-size steam and diesel locomotives – was commandeered by the War Department during the Second World War and has since become one of the county’s top tourist spots.

As it is nearing its 100-year anniversary in 2027, bosses at the beloved site have been looking at ways to upgrade the ageing facilities.

They have worked out they would need a staggering £30 million over the next 10 years to carry out all the planned repairs and upgrades it currently has on the cards.

General manager Danny Martin says while the figure is a target, things are still looking good for the attraction.

“That figure was given to our shareholders to give them a feel for what sort of investment we ideally need,” he said.

“That would be to do a lot of renewal work given that we're coming up to the 100th anniversary in two years.

“That's not a figure that the railway would have to close without, but if we were going to be ambitious, this is what we could do if we could gather different ways of getting funding.

“It would mean all of the carriages, and a lot of the buildings which are showing their age, could see development.

“Equally, take the other end of the scale, if we carry on as we are now, we're not going to go out of business because none of us would let that happen.

“This is a board that's being more ambitious, a bit more clear to people that you can trickle along each year, or you can do a little bit more and go into planning mode and say, let's really look at what we can do.”

The line, known as “Kent’s Mainline in Miniature”, sees one-third full-size steam and diesel locomotives run 13.5 miles across the Kent coast from Hythe to Dungeness with four stops in between.

Tickets start from £7.50 for a child and £15 for an adult for the shortest 20-minute journey between Hythe and Dymchurch.

While passenger levels have returned to around 90% of what they were before the pandemic, Mr Martin says ticket sales alone are barely enough to cover rising maintenance costs.

The two main projects that RH&DR is hoping to focus funding on are buying new carriages and improving station facilities, particularly in Hythe and New Romney.

“The majority of the carriages are now approaching 30 years old and they'll last to 40, easily,” explained Mr Martin.

“But because they were built around the same time, we do not want to suddenly have to find money to buy perhaps 20 or 30 in one year, because they're going to be over £100,000 each.

“They need completely new bodies and new frames and we've managed to re-engineer them once, and we're not going to be able to do that a second time.

“The second thing is work on the two biggest stations.

“Hythe Station has currently got part of the building awaiting repairs which we can do, but we really want to merge the new cafe building we bought six years ago with the rest of the site.

“Hythe is a very important part of our railway because it is a lovely town and with the canal frontage we have, we could open up our restaurants to look over the water.

“And then New Romney has had some work in the sheds and the loco area, but the public area where the model railway is, and where the small heritage centre museum is, also needs a complete steady rebuild, probably in two phases.

“Both of those are more than £5 million jobs at the very minimum.”

The railway formed part of the coastal defence network in preparation for a German invasion and was used to transport troops and munitions to rural outposts.

It also served the war effort by helping to build Pluto [Pipe-Lines Under The Ocean] that helped send fuel and oil to the Allies after the D-Day invasion.