 The East Kent Railway became the London Chatham and Dover Railway 1 August 1859 and in 1861 the bridge became a part of the newly completed Chatham Main Line from London to Dover.The South Eastern Railway, the LCDR's local rival, built a branch line from its nearby railway line at across the Medway to its own Rochester station, , opened on 20 July 1891, and its own Chatham station, , opened 1 March 1892, for which it built the massive second railway bridge over the Medway.The two rivals merged under a Joint Managing Committee in 1899 to form the South Eastern and Chatham Railway, and subsequent rationalisation saw the SER's Chatham Central branch closed on 1 October 1911, three years before World War I.