A Strood (Medway) to Reading (90miles) semi fast service would be well used if it could be implemented

marshlinker · Tuesday at 13:03

Moderator note: Split from

Redhill-Tonbridge disruption this weekend (10-11 October)

Apparently a speed restriction has been imposed over defective track on this line, which has also led to all Hastings-London Bridge diversions this way terminating/starting at Tonbridge: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service-disruptions/tonbridge-20261010/ Description A speed restriction has...

www.railforums.co.uk

izvor said:
Trouble is, most of the time it's only a (very) secondary route so presumably low priority for attention, especially with all the other sections requiring remedial action across the region. It's only when there's disruption, like this weekend, that it reverts to its former mainline status and the shortcomings are more widely felt.

Hope it is fixed soon though as the delays and missed connections are becoming a real pain for regulars!

The only reason its a secondary route is because of Railway Industry Politics, lack of investment and ambition. Theres no way a Strood (Medway) to Reading (90miles) semi fast service - say Strood, Maidstone West, Paddock Wood, Tonbridge, Edenbridge, Redhill, Reigate, Dorking, Guildford, Farnborough, Wokingham and Reading, wouldnt be well used.

Unfortunately this is true for any orbital route in the south east (i.e. doesn't terminate in London).

Could you imagine the competing M25 being run by the rail industry. Theyd presumably want it to be reduced to a single track road with passing places because of a lack of demand.

RailUK Forums

izvor · Tuesday at 23:28

There's definitely scope for development here, particularly with Gatwick Airport expansion now set to happen. This has been discussed here on several recent threads. At the very least, a Strood to Redhill service could be introduced at minimal cost just by incorporating existing services, with a stopping pattern such as you suggest. Reading is more of a problem with 3tph and power supply issues.

marshlinker said:
Could you imagine the competing M25 being run by the rail industry. Theyd presumably want it to be reduced to a single track road with passing places because of a lack of demand.

I don't think it's the rail industry at fault here but the usual DfT/Treasury parsimonious combo.

JonathanH · Tuesday at 23:59

marshlinker said:
The only reason its a secondary route is because of Railway Industry Politics, lack of investment and ambition.

The alternative view is that it doesn't serve anywhere of note between Redhill and Tonbridge and there is a more direct route to London from Tonbridge via Sevenoaks. London Bridge and Tonbridge are just over 30 minutes apart via Sevenoaks, but 45 minutes via Redhill.

The limited service between Redhill and Tonbridge is the result of various experiments to try and encourage use effectively failing in the 90s and 00s. Neither Tunbridge Wells, nor Maidstone East to Gatwick after electrification stimulated demand, through connections to London Bridge didn't either.

marshlinker said:
Theres no way a Strood (Medway) to Reading (90miles) semi fast service - say Strood, Maidstone West, Paddock Wood, Tonbridge, Edenbridge, Redhill, Reigate, Dorking, Guildford, Farnborough, Wokingham and Reading, wouldnt be well used.

No one in their right mind would divert the Reading to Gatwick service to Tonbridge and Maidstone. Gatwick is a much more appropriate traffic generator from the Reading side. Indeed, extension to Brighton would probably stimulate more demand than going to Tonbridge.

marshlinker said:
Could you imagine the competing M25 being run by the rail industry. Theyd presumably want it to be reduced to a single track road with passing places because of a lack of demand.

The M25 has a much bigger 'catchment basin' and better 'feeder routes' than the railway line from Reading to Maidstone. The other difference is that the M25 is the only viable way of getting round London quickly from the South Eastern corner. In contrast, going via London is viable in a railway perspective so skirting London is not so necessary.

Mgameing123 · Wednesday at 06:16

JonathanH said:
The alternative view is that it doesn't serve anywhere of note between Redhill and Tonbridge and there is a more direct route to London from Tonbridge via Sevenoaks. London Bridge and Tonbridge are just over 30 minutes apart via Sevenoaks, but 45 minutes via Redhill.

The limited service between Redhill and Tonbridge is the result of various experiments to try and encourage use effectively failing in the 90s and 00s. Neither Tunbridge Wells, nor Maidstone East to Gatwick after electrification stimulated demand, through connections to London Bridge didn't either.

No one in their right mind would divert the Reading to Gatwick service to Tonbridge and Maidstone. Gatwick is a much more appropriate traffic generator from the Reading side. Indeed, extension to Brighton would probably stimulate more demand than going to Tonbridge.

The M25 has a much bigger 'catchment basin' and better 'feeder routes' than the railway line from Reading to Maidstone. The other difference is that the M25 is the only viable way of getting round London quickly from the South Eastern corner. In contrast, going via London is viable in a railway perspective so skirting London is not so necessary.

Despite the aforementioned capacity issues you’d could provide via an additional train per hour or by making trains split/couple together at Redhill.

Class 317 · Wednesday at 07:44

The demand for travel in that direction is definitely there looking at the road congestion etc.

The problem is making the service fast enough to be attractive with very good connections to generate the demand. Then proving that to the treasury to get finance.

Hopefully when EWR opens it will massively exceed forecasts and help make the case for more investment in radial routes further out from London.

If the NDL itself was invested in to provide more capacity so more and faster trains could run, I'd expect usage would rise significantly.

quantinghome · Wednesday at 10:02

The end-to-end journey time would be woefully uncompetitive with the current fastest time via central London, even if were somehow run as a semi-fast service. Public transport and road transport require different strategies; the former works best with connecting nodes whereas the latter needs bypasses.

Class15 · Wednesday at 10:16

This could happen in the future.
But via Crossrail, not the North Downs.

Class 317 · Wednesday at 13:22

quantinghome said:
The end-to-end journey time would be woefully uncompetitive with the current fastest time via central London, even if were somehow run as a semi-fast service. Public transport and road transport require different strategies; the former works best with connecting nodes whereas the latter needs bypasses.

Not all Journeys would be end to end.

quantinghome · Wednesday at 14:14

Class 317 said:
Not all Journeys would be end to end.

Of course, but most of those already have direct services.

stevieinselby · Wednesday at 14:20

Mgameing123 said:
Despite the aforementioned capacity issues you’d could provide via an additional train per hour or by making trains split/couple together at Redhill.

Splitting/joining services on busy lines at busy stations is a brilliant way to reduce the reliability and resilience of the network.

Splitting is less of a problem, but joining can leave trains blocking platforms that are needed by other trains if an incoming portion is running late. It is only sensible if you can have a dedicated platform for the services that are joining. How much capacity is there at Redhill to accommodate a waiting portion that's blocking a platform?

Class 317 · Wednesday at 17:21

quantinghome said:
Of course, but most of those already have direct services.

I was referring to for example Guildford to Tonbridge etc.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Wednesday at 17:31 ==

It's not just new direct journeys but ones that become easier with 1 change eg Dorking to Ashford.

quantinghome · Wednesday at 17:51

Class 317 said:
I was referring to for example Guildford to Tonbridge etc.

Obviously, in the absence of a single orbital through service, some origin-destination pairs won't have a direct connection.

Are we seeing a massive suppression of passenger demand as a result? The ODM matrix shows there are around 2000 passengers between Guildford and Tonbridge per year. Let's compare that to Redhill-Reading which has a direct connection and is about the same distance (Redhill has about the same population as Tonbridge; Reading is significantly bigger than Guildford). That's around 8000. Given the population difference between Reading and Guildford that number should be halved to make a truer comparison of the expected number of passengers between Guildford and Tonbridge. So that's 4000. A doubling of passenger numbers over what we get today. 2000 extra passengers. Per year. Less than 10 per day. Less than 1 additional passenger per train.

brad465 · Wednesday at 17:54

I think a Strood-Gatwick service is more likely than a Strood-Reading one. If no paths exist from Redhill-Gatwick, then it would still make sense to at least merge Strood-Redhill into one service.

cle · Wednesday at 18:15

I do think that with better signalling, the NDL could be a more strategic route. As could Redhill-Ashford.

As to what that would look like, it's harder to say. I would argue Gatwick - Kent (Strood/Medway via Maidstone, or Ashford/beyond) - is probably higher priority. And Three Bridges / Brighton if ever pathable.

If we had a northern version (ie across Herts) - it would be highly useful, as EWR will be even though it is further out. Side note that Redhill = Bletchley, not quite the main draw but on the mainline. But maybe other than Gatwick and Guildford, these just aren't major places.

Class 317 · Wednesday at 18:39

quantinghome said:
Obviously, in the absence of a single orbital through service, some origin-destination pairs won't have a direct connection.

Are we seeing a massive suppression of passenger demand as a result? The ODM matrix shows there are around 2000 passengers between Guildford and Tonbridge per year. Let's compare that to Redhill-Reading which has a direct connection and is about the same distance (Redhill has about the same population as Tonbridge; Reading is significantly bigger than Guildford). That's around 8000. Given the population difference between Reading and Guildford that number should be halved to make a truer comparison of the expected number of passengers between Guildford and Tonbridge. So that's 4000. A doubling of passenger numbers over what we get today. 2000 extra passengers. Per year. Less than 10 per day. Less than 1 additional passenger per train.

I suspect demand is quite understated but I do understand that you're point but comparing only Reading to Redhill is a misuse of statistics.

Many journeys will start at other stations, continue to other stations and be missed from these statistics.

A transformation of the service and connectional possibilities is likely to drive demand up more than just a through service alone. Also it would take time for demand to build as people change jobs, move house, attend a different college or school etc.

The road network that way is very overloaded suggesting high demand what's lacking is the infrastructure for rail to compete effectively.

Mgameing123 · Wednesday at 19:15

stevieinselby said:
Splitting/joining services on busy lines at busy stations is a brilliant way to reduce the reliability and resilience of the network.

Splitting is less of a problem, but joining can leave trains blocking platforms that are needed by other trains if an incoming portion is running late. It is only sensible if you can have a dedicated platform for the services that are joining. How much capacity is there at Redhill to accommodate a waiting portion that's blocking a platform?

It is but passengers to tend to prefer direct connections over having to change twice. And is reliability a big issue on the NDL?

35B · Wednesday at 19:28

Class 317 said:
I suspect demand is quite understated but I do understand that you're point but comparing only Reading to Redhill is a misuse of statistics.

Many journeys will start at other stations, continue to other stations and be missed from these statistics.

A transformation of the service and connectional possibilities is likely to drive demand up more than just a through service alone. Also it would take time for demand to build as people change jobs, move house, attend a different college or school etc.

The road network that way is very overloaded suggesting high demand what's lacking is the infrastructure for rail to compete effectively.

But what is the actual demand in the area? When I lived there 25 years ago, the roads were congested but that was made up of lots of short journeys that didn’t obviously relate to the railway network.

stevieinselby · Wednesday at 19:47

Mgameing123 said:
It is but passengers to tend to prefer direct connections over having to change twice. And is reliability a big issue on the NDL?

Looking at Redhill over the last couple of weeks, it's pretty rare to find a day where there haven't been at least a dozen GW services that are either delayed by +5 mins or cancelled ... so, yes, by the looks of things, it is. Not a great surprise when it's interfacing with the Brighton mainline at Redhill, the Portsmouth mainline at Guildford, and the Waterloo line at Wokingham.

Delays of 5–10 minutes might not sound like much, but when it means you're blocking a platform for that whole time it starts to become more of a problem.

quantinghome · Wednesday at 20:04

Class 317 said:
I suspect demand is quite understated but I do understand that you're point but comparing only Reading to Redhill is a misuse of statistics.

Many journeys will start at other stations, continue to other stations and be missed from these statistics.

(Yeah, sorry... Hold on while I whip up a full demand forecast for a railway equivalent of the M25...). Obviously there are many other origin-destination pairs. But journeys like Reading to Redhill give at least some indication of the demand that does exist for a direct orbital connection. And let's be honest there aren't THAT many origin-destination pairs once you remove those that (i) already have a direct connection, (ii) are beyond an hour's commute, (iii) are small and (iv) would always be quicker via central London.

Class 317 said:
A transformation of the service and connectional possibilities is likely to drive demand up more than just a through service alone. Also it would take time for demand to build as people change jobs, move house, attend a different college or school etc.

Those sort of journeys are realistically limited to about an hour. How many journeys are you bringing the time down to under an hour? Guildford-Tonbridge, Redhill-Maidstone? These aren't likely to be big flows.

Class 317 said:
The road network that way is very overloaded suggesting high demand what's lacking is the infrastructure for rail to compete effectively.

35B said:
But what is the actual demand in the area? When I lived there 25 years ago, the roads were congested but that was made up of lots of short journeys that didn’t obviously relate to the railway network.

Railways are good at what they're good at, which is transporting large numbers of people point to point. Particularly if you have lots of points lying roughly in a straight line.

Railways are not good at what they're not good at, which is transporting people from diffuse origins to diffuse destinations. Like it or not, roads ARE good at that, arguably TOO good which is why we have so much congestion.

If you had Reading-sized towns at regular intervals in a single arc around London, that would be a different story. ~~But we don't.~~ Hang on, actually, we do, it's called the Oxford-Cambridge arc and it is getting a railway. But the area south of London has a very different settlement pattern. It has loads of small towns, barely any of which trouble the six-digit mark. They're not arranged in a single arc; they're all over the place. So a single railway cannot directly connect anything but a small fraction of them. A railway equivalent to the M25 would require most people to change trains once, probably twice, which kills it as a viable option. By contrast the M25 connects the whole of the south east because people can use it seamlessly with other roads. A railway, no matter how good the infrastructure, cannot hope to compete.

mister-sparky · Thursday at 02:29

There used to be services from strood and Tunbridge wells to Gatwick/three bridges. They were canned because they mostly carried fresh air. Line speeds are too slow to make journeys competitive.

brad465 · Thursday at 21:14

mister-sparky said:
There used to be services from strood and Tunbridge wells to Gatwick/three bridges. They were canned because they mostly carried fresh air. Line speeds are too slow to make journeys competitive.

If speed is the problem, run an extra service non-stop between Tonbridge and Redhill that then goes to Gatwick; the line is 85mph except for that 40mph level crossing (which could do with being closed/upgraded). It could also run non-stop between Maidstone West and Paddock Wood; now that 2tph run to Paddock Wood, the intermediate stops are covered and all have a low patronage anyway.

ox_chap · Thursday at 21:27

If you had Reading-sized towns at regular intervals in a single arc around London, that would be a different story. ~~But we don't.~~ Hang on, actually, we do, it's called the Oxford-Cambridge arc and it is getting a railway

Well, if you could squeeze the service beyond Reading, amongst all the other traffic in the Thames Valley, then why not Oxford and over East-West Rail? (Wasn't GWR going to start the Gatwicks at Oxford anyway, with their tri-mode trains - what happened to them in the end?).

The ultimate "crayon adventure" would be to then plan a route from Cambridge that ended up opposite Strood, the other side of the Thames. Then, short of a bridge, we would finally have a railway answer to the M25.

cle · Thursday at 21:48

quantinghome said:
If you had Reading-sized towns at regular intervals in a single arc around London, that would be a different story. ~~But we don't.~~ Hang on, actually, we do, it's called the Oxford-Cambridge arc and it is getting a railway. But the area south of London has a very different settlement pattern. It has loads of small towns, barely any of which trouble the six-digit mark. They're not arranged in a single arc; they're all over the place. So a single railway cannot directly connect anything but a small fraction of them. A railway equivalent to the M25 would require most people to change trains once, probably twice, which kills it as a viable option. By contrast the M25 connects the whole of the south east because people can use it seamlessly with other roads. A railway, no matter how good the infrastructure, cannot hope to compete.

The South Coast is really this 'string of pearls' - about the same distance as EWR from London and the West Coastway is its metro and regional trundle...

Gatwick and Brighton are the draws in the Southern region, so again, I think a Gatwick-Redhill-Ashford service would be much more used than one to Guildford and Reading, even though they are both major places. Brighton-Ashford used to exist (and should again) - via Hastings, and paths along the BML are hard won and should be for long trains.

Getting to Strood (I'd rather get through Medway, for the larger market) via Maidstone might also be a useful ambition and take over the Redhill-Tonbridge. But a lot of stations, and these seem much better as semi-fast services so potentially it's additional. Certainly Redhill-Tonbridge-Ashford has a lot of spare capacity. You might get to Canterbury and Ramsgate too.

JonathanH · Thursday at 21:49

ox_chap said:
(Wasn't GWR going to start the Gatwicks at Oxford anyway, with their tri-mode trains - what happened to them in the end?).

No. Oxford to Gatwick wasn't in the plan. The 769s were associated with a 3tph service between Reading and Redhill / Gatwick, which required 10 units. The 7 unit 2tph service on the North Downs Line provides with all off peak trains to Gatwick provides a much more cost-effective service.

ox_chap said:
The ultimate "crayon adventure" would be to then plan a route from Cambridge that ended up opposite Strood, the other side of the Thames. Then, short of a bridge, we would finally have a railway answer to the M25.

The railway answer to the M25 is to go through London, as the issues which require people to use the M25 don't apply to the railway in the same way.

The crayon route could actually start at Cambridge and return to Cambridge via Bishops Stortford, Temple Mills, High Meads, Barking, Dagenham Junction, Gravesend, Strood, and all the way back round to Cambridge.

cle said:
Gatwick and Brighton are the draws in the Southern region, so again, I think a Gatwick-Redhill-Ashford service would be much more used than one to Guildford and Reading, even though they are both major places. Brighton-Ashford used to exist (and should again) - via Hastings, and paths along the BML are hard won and should be for long trains.

I think you are right about Gatwick and Brighton, but the railway demand isn't huge from the east side as none of the places are really large enough to drive the demand. It is perhaps a shame that Croydon didn't become the metropolis for high value jobs fuelling inward commuting that was once hoped. If it had, then sending a semi-fast service from Tonbridge and beyond up through Redhill to Victoria might have been viable, but the reality is that any connections such a service could provide aren't much more favourable than going via London Bridge or Waterloo East / Waterloo.

cle said:
Certainly Redhill-Tonbridge-Ashford has a lot of spare capacity.

At the same time, the existing trains on the route often have a lot of spare capacity as well.

ox_chap · Thursday at 22:10

No. Oxford to Gatwick wasn't in the plan. The 769s were associated with a 3tph service between Reading and Redhill / Gatwick, which required 10 units. The 7 unit 2tph service on the North Downs Line provides with all off peak trains to Gatwick provides a much more cost-effective service.

Just looked on Wikipedia (which admittedly is often wrong), and under "Abandoned Operations", it does mention Oxford.... Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_769

JonathanH · Thursday at 22:15

ox_chap said:
Just looked on Wikipedia (which admittedly is often wrong), and under "Abandoned Operations", it does mention Oxford.... Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_769

There was no plan for them to extend North Downs services to Oxford, despite what Wikipedia says - see https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...off-lease-march-23.174866/page-4#post-4408321 and https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/gwr-class-165-166-turbo-diagrams.157030/page-23#post-4399617

cle · 2026-10-16T00:42:33+0100

JonathanH said:
At the same time, the existing trains on the route often have a lot of spare capacity as well.

Because they don’t go anywhere useful! Chicken and egg. They once went to London Bridge via Croydon. Gatwick would be the other draw.

On the other topic, I do remember a set of Thames Trains services used to run from Oxford and even Banbury to Gatwick via the NDL. And it was one secondary benefit to the new flyovers at Reading from the line to the GWML slows. It’s doable, if the market and willing was there. But Oxford cannot really take on more service, esp terminating, per many of the other threads on that underwhelming station and its dramas!

JonathanH · 2026-10-16T00:55:25+0100

cle said:
Because they don’t go anywhere useful!

I was talking about Tonbridge to Ashford, which trains go to London, but can at some off-peak times be fairly lightly loaded.

cle said:
They once went to London Bridge via Croydon. Gatwick would be the other draw.

I suspect that the upshot of services not running through to London is some people using cars to Merstham, Redhill, Hildenborough, Tonbridge etc. Gatwick not so certain. As I noted, it is a shame that Croydon isn't a significant traffic generator for longer distance travel.

cle said:
On the other topic, I do remember a set of Thames Trains services used to run from Oxford and even Banbury to Gatwick via the NDL.

Yes, they did, but over time the number of through services dropped.

cle said:
It’s doable, if the market and willing was there. But Oxford cannot really take on more service, esp terminating, per many of the other threads on that underwhelming station and its dramas!

Yes, but difficult to see how it could be justified as you say.

35B · 2026-10-16T07:37:35+0100

JonathanH said:
I suspect that the upshot of services not running through to London is some people using cars to Merstham, Redhill, Hildenborough, Tonbridge etc. Gatwick not so certain. As I noted, it is a shame that Croydon isn't a significant traffic generator for longer distance travel.

Driving from where, though? I had a relative who used Hildenborough as a railhead, but lived in Penshurst. By the time he’d got the car out to get to a station, it was better to go to Hildenborough as trains to London were a) faster and b) more frequent. The Oxted lines do a good job for railheading custom towards Croydon. And so on.

JonathanH · 2026-10-16T08:19:49+0100

35B said:
Driving from where, though? I had a relative who used Hildenborough as a railhead, but lived in Penshurst. By the time he’d got the car out to get to a station, it was better to go to Hildenborough as trains to London were a) faster and b) more frequent. The Oxted lines do a good job for railheading custom towards Croydon. And so on.

Indeed, and people who live in Nutfield drive to Merstham or Redhill. I am sure people railhead to Oxted too as you say. Edenbridge has a London service. That is why there is no particular impetus to provide a through service from the Redhill to Tonbridge line to London.

I know that there are views that railheading should be avoided by running better train services but the stations are generally poorly situated for the main settlements.

A Strood (Medway) to Reading (90miles) semi fast service would be well used if it could be implemented

Member

RailUK Forums

Member

Veteran Member

Member

Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Member

Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Veteran Member

Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Veteran Member