The Railway (JD Wetherspoon), Gillingham

A surprising Spoons conversion of an old dead pub - you can only presume they got it cheap. It now bears little resemblance to its previous incarnation beyond the frontage, with a long low extension at the rear housing the main bar. There are two side rooms where the old pub used to be. The beer range seemed fair enough, with 4 guests on, and the non-urban environment gives the place a more relaxed feel than some of its stablemates. A useful break on a train journey.

A new and 'much, much larger than it initially looks' Wetherspoon outlet, partly incorporating an existing pub of the same name. It still looks traditional enough from the station or nearby main road, but the interior (much of it in the recent extension) is very anonymous. That said, it's a good addition to the local pub scene, and seemed to be doing good business on a Sunday afternoon. With nine different cask beers from the two banks of six handpumps, there was a decent choice of real ales, and my pint of the Minagof 'international brewer' Juicy IPA (£1.99) was excellent value.

The UK's newest JDW is an original pub that was opened in 1901 as the Railway Hotel so may be both Victorian as well as Edwardian! An early photograph on the front of the menus show that it was a Style & Winch house, a Maidstone brewery that was taken over by Barclay Perkins in 1929 so in the days of the big six breweries it would have been a Courage pub and this is confirmed by the older photos. My Kent guide from the 1990s show it as selling Whitbread Boddington's Bitter. Whatever the past may have been it is now a greatly modernised open plan rectangular room with typical JDW fixtures and fittings. The only sign of any originality are the leaded upper windows on the Station Road side. It struck me as being a typical JDW where the previous building could have been just about anything. The clientele was fairly typical with a mix of young and old, families with rampaging or orderly offspring plus earlier a few shouty groups of males probably off to some sporting event. There was no obvious sign of a daytime drinking brigade apart from myself. The long bar on the left had twelve hand pumps with the JDW Trio Of Doom doubled but six Kent beers which were Hopdaemon Incubus & Skrimshander IPA, Westerham British Bulldog, Family Stout & Audit Ale and Whitstable Winkle Picker. These were all £1.99 so good value whereas the food prices were slightly more expensive than average but not outrageously so. Sadly the Audit Ale was at the end of the cask and not entirely clear but the Family Stout was excellent. One of the chill cabinets was devoted to ciders, both bottles and six glass jars with taps that presumably had been filled from the usual boxes with a plastic container within. This is so much better than the boxes, especially when the plastic inner container has to be removed and it looks like a gross scene from Casualty or Holby City. I spent several hours here as my left knee was giving me aggravation and it started to rain. Overall I quite liked it but earlier in the day there were too few staff on the floor although I didn't have to wait long to get served at any time. It's a typical JDW so if you don't like them you won't like this one but for me it was above average. It gets a strong 7.

Official site of The Railway (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Official site of The Railway (JD Wetherspoon) - www.jdwetherspoon.com

Due to open as a Spoons in September.