The railway comes to Kettlestone 

As early as 1845 the Lynn & Fakenham Railway gave notice ‘..to build a line..’ between those two towns but it was not until July 1876 that the Lynn & Fakenham Act received royal assent for its construction. The ground works and engineering infrastructure were taken on by a London based company called Wilkinson & Jarvis and by August 1879 a line was opened as far as Massingham. The penultimate station at that time was Hillington, built to serve the village and the Ffolkes family at the Hall and for a while was designated ‘Hillington for Sandringham’. A Russian Czarina is recorded as disembarking there to visit the royal household. In August 1880 the line was opened as far as Fakenham with a wooden station being built at Hempton. A subsequent stone and brick platform can still be seen in Jewsons yard showing where it was. In November 1879 the Lynn & Fakenham Railway gave notice to purchase ‘..land at Kettlestone Common..’ in pursuance of developing the line to Melton Constable and beyond. In February 1881 the Trustees of Kettlestone Poors Allotment were offered £495 for 6 acres 2 roods and 13 perchs of the land, 3 acres of which ‘..were for station purposes..’. On 19th January 1882 this extension was opened as far as Guestwick with intermediate stations at Thursford and Hindolvestone. Trains were now running over Kettlestone land. The Norwich to Wells turnpike road (now A1067) was crossed at Langor Bridge and was controlled by a gatekeeper’s cabin. From Fakenham to this point it was a double track and single thereafter. In January1883 the amalgamation of the Lynn & Fakenham, Yarmouth & North Norfolk and Yarmouth Union Railways took effect and gave rise to the emergence of the Eastern &  Midland Railway

The Eastern & Midland Railway was regarded as an ’aggressive’ company and absorbed a number of smaller companies culminating in a network that went as far as Saxby in the west, via Peterborough, Bourne, Spalding, King’s Lynn, Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft in the east. It developed the line to Sheringham and Cromer thereby establishing commercially important links with the Midlands for tourist and fish transportation traffic. Unfortunately, it always had money problems and in 1893 it was taken over by a joint enterprise between the Midland and Great Northern Railways and was then known as the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway. Melton Constable became an important railway centre under the general managership of a man called William Marriott. In its prime it was able to build four locomotives as well as trucks and wagons, had extensive maintenance workshops as well as its own gasworks. Marriott was a pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete for line side equipment such as signal posts, gateposts and incline markers.

The M&GN became a well regarded company by those who worked for it and used it. In the grouping of 1923 it became part of the LNER but still largely maintained its independent character although Melton Constable went into decline. There are still traces of M&GN works in the parish, the most noticeable being the signal box at Langor Bridge, concrete gate posts and the cottage at the end of Holbrigg Lane. In the early part of the 20th century a Kettlestone family, the Elmers, lived in the gatekeeper’s cottage, with Charlie being a plate layer and his wife Alice the gatekeeper. At Langor Bridge there was a single line siding (no station) where empty trucks would be left for loading sugar beet from nearby farms and others loaded with coal for collection by local merchants. Thursford held the seasonal record of exporting the most sugar beet in the eastern region; a staggering 15,000 tons. In the 1930s the line became very busy with as many as 24 trains daily passing through during the holiday season and the sound of them would have been the background to life in the village. Men working in the fields were timing their day by the passing of the regular timetabled trains, the 10.05 Leicester express being a typical example. Sadly, on the 28th February 1959 the line closed as did much of the M&GN network and the landscape fell silent. It was not a Beeching axe job but the consequences of growing road transport making the line even more difficult to be worked profitably. British Rail were quick to make this section of the line unusable and contractors were tearing up the rails at Langor Bridge very soon after closure. BR had already had offers for sections of the network to be taken over by private enterprise but were very resistant to this idea. However, the North Norfolk Railway from Holt to Sheringham was a section taken on privately and has become one of the most successful tourist attractions in Norfolk .