The Bluebell Railway 2008

The 23rd. Sussex Home Guard were detailed to man Horsted Keynes Station and run the defence and secure the station as if were a ‘vulnerable’ point facility C.1942.
This duty required a platoon of role playing Home Guardsmen under the command of a subaltern, installing Anti -Aircraft Lewis and Bren Light machine guns in sandbagged emplacements , check points and mobile patrols all working from a central office\orderly room staffed by Women Home Guard Auxiliaries carrying out clerical duties, Telephone work and tea brewing.

The orderly room was furnished with working field telephones, maps,stationary, typewriter, weapon and ammunition storage as well as other items. All of the correct vintage.
An A.R.P. siren and incendiary bomb equipment was at hand outside the orderly room.

In front of the main booking hall were timber road blocks, barbed wire entanglements and more sand bags, a Vickers Medium Machine Gun, a motor cycle and a Home Guard modified Standard motor car mounting a Boys Anti-Tank Rifle.

Duties during the weekend included I.D. checks, ‘detaining ‘ suspicious characters, posting sentries in and around the station buildings, observing for enemy aircraft activity , searching for spies or saboteurs staging air raid alerts and generally imparting a feeling of wartime urgency and activity to the weekend.