Hornby Visitor Centre cafe will shut for good this month

Just the Ticket Café at Hornby Hobbies visitor centre in Margate will shut this month.

The café, run by East Kent College catering students, will close its doors on August 24.

In a notice on the café web page it says: “Hornby Hobbies and East Kent College have taken the difficult decision to close the café at the end of August 2017.

“The cafe’s last trading day will be Thursday, August 24.

“Hornby would like to thank East Kent College for their support over the last few years.
The Visitor Centre will continue to offer a small range of cold drinks and snacks going forward.”

Shane Godwin, Director of Commercial Operations at EKC, said: “The college recently took the decision to stop providing café services at the Hornby Hobbies Visitors Centre after examining the provision we have across East Kent.

“Unfortunately at this point in time we felt it was no longer viable to continue operating at Hornby Hobbies Visitors Centre. The decision to end our work at Hornby Hobbies will have no impact on students, who will gain experience at the many other cafes we run.”

 Site sale

The Hornby factory site in Ramsgate Road was bought by a locomotive company last year for £2.25million.

Locomotive Storage Limited, a property company affiliated with Locomotive Services Limited, Statesman Rail and Icons of Steam made the acquisition of the former Hornby plc facilities at Westwood Industrial Estate.

Locomotive Storage intends to embark on a rolling refurbishment of the facilities and to engage in discussions with interested parties regarding potential uses of the site.

The Hornby Visitor Centre is the only tenant and they will be remaining on the site after plans to build a new  £3.7million scheme centre in Ramsgate were ditched. The firm is leasing back that part of the site from Locomotive Storage Limited.

Hornby moved distribution to Hersden in 2014 and office functions to Discovery Park in 2015, ending more than 60 years of work in Margate.