In response to the reply from "tsr" then I disagree with his comments at 1435 today.
I few points to consider - I am also in communication with the local staff and management.
Yes, all very well, but I work with them...
I was working for BR(Southern) in 1969 when the Uckfield to Lewes line closed. The Lewes relief road was under construction when the railway closed. The new road was built to either side of the railway embankment boundary ready for the railway to close.
The railway would have required some expenditure including strengthening of the bridge over the River Ouse at Lewes which was weakened during the floods at Lewes in September 1968. Because of the poor state of the bridge the railway closed prematurely in February 1969 and bus service was provided until May 1969.
Plenty of structures have been built for much larger roads without ever seeing use by road traffic. London, an area which is not exactly blessed with huge amounts of land for road building, has had aborted major structures and unused land in place for years which should have been used for motorways (eg. the north end of the M23, as an example) and the Ringways scheme. Compared to this, the Lewes relief road is small fry and if there had been money and political will to sort out the other problems with the railway, I reckon it could still be there, perhaps in reduced format. Effectively I believe the Lewes roads issue has always been a very good, and quite clever, scapegoat for the poor maintenance and lack of foresight for the future viability of the rail infrastructure.
At Uckfield if the railway was reopened then the existing High Street road would be severed (at the site of the level crossing) and a short new connecting road over the railway constructed from adjacent to the bus station to the junction with the B2102.
Is there local support for this? What would be the effect on local businesses? It's an important through route and rebalancing town centre roads is not a matter to be taken lightly. Once again I would also remind you that this discussion, on which we are disagreeing, originally stems from my analysis that a single-line diesel route wouldn't be worthwhile. In a sense, I think the scale of debate has got out of hand.
You are unlikely to be able to ever redevelop half of Uckfield town centre for a route of this scale. I would fully agree that it would be good to redevelop the Uckfield to Lewes line, but a lot more needs to be done to strengthen the operations of the Uckfield Line itself. And if all the studies haven't shown this would be feasible, it's a great shame but nothing less than that would be likely to succeed anyway.
Frankly, if the corridor generates that much peak traffic it seems unlikely that the only market is northwards. Perhaps the whole corridor is in need of improvement, given the amount of traffic, however that is simply no reason not to provide full connectivity in the area.
I totally agree. Once again, what I am really saying is that experimenting with a random single-line secondary route won't possibly be able to accommodate the full potential, and it is likely to have significant teething troubles, or worse, for reliability. It's also much more complex to operate than just "open a new bit of line, see how it goes for a bit".
All that said: as it so happens, rail commuting with a half-hourly service between Crowborough and Uckfield (contra-peak, including Buxted too) isn't terribly popular, and even that level of service would be optimistic with the "minimum action" type of reinstatement of the link to Lewes. The traditional London demand is far greater, which leads me to believe that one of the principal uses of an Uckfield-Lewes link would be as a diversionary route to London, and certainly with only modest local traffic south of Crowborough towards Lewes. With through trains to Brighton, which we'd all
like, I can see it would be quite a bit more attractive, but that's a whole different ball game. You are quite right that
full connectivity would likely attract very healthy custom, but I think that's a bit different from a lot of the ideas on the table.
Third rail or overhead, there is a movement for more capacity on the Ashford - Brighton corridor and better connections into HS1, none of which are going to be achievable as a diesel island, unless both the diesel routes are expected to be kept in aspic for ever more.
I am very much in favour of better services across the Marshlink and I'm watching that one with great interest. Some staff at Southern over the last couple of years have been seriously trying to improve the stock in use anyway, just without much effect (as it stands), and I am sure much more investment is needed
I'm afraid I can't see any relevance that track access hours have to the subject, given that an extended Uckfield route isn't going to be running through the night any more than the rest of the network.
The gap between the last evening and first morning services is barely sufficient as it is - you can see this from the very frequent requirements to replace the last two trains with buses, often all week or at the very least from Monday to Thursday. This was even more prominent with the platform lengthening, and a similar impact would be felt from rebuilding the Uckfield end of the line. Add in the longer journey times to and from Lewes, and the fact that I am pretty sure Lovers Walk would be most unhappy in the medium-term future with all the empty stock from the first and last trains from the Wealden area as well, and you're looking at a lot of problems, I'm afraid.
Given the timetable changes being implemented as part of Thameslink "2000" and the integration of HS1 into Kent services a few years ago, are you seriously expecting us to believe that an additional hourly service can't be accommodated on Coastway East ?
Yes. I'm suggesting it would be much more attractive to accommodate a new route if you could first strengthen the infrastructure on the whole line up to Sanderstead, and then prove it with decent timetabling and staffing enhancements, and then open up a line to Lewes which could accommodate rather more than 1tph. But that, sadly, doesn't look likely to happen, and I would never be happy to endorse anything less.
Operating practice changes all the time on the network, and to suggest that this is a reason why the Wealden Line can't be made into a useful link providing access South as well as North is not a valid argument.
Major operating practice changes on [what is currently] the Southern network will be driven by DfT specification & policy changes for the foreseeable future, and I think this is unlikely to happen if there is only a borderline business case for a minimally-equipped branch line through rural Sussex.
Absolutely not.
Capacity/reliability enhancements should be considered now with a view to extending towards Uckfield.
That was actually my entire argument...
There is absolutely no value whatsoever in going through all of the studies and works necessary to improve the existing section, then another set of studies on the Uckfield - Lewes section, only to discover that you've still not enough capacity on the Northern section and have to do another set of works. That is a recipe for wasting money. The Wealden line corridor should be considered and upgraded as a whole.
That's exactly what I was driving at in the first place! To do anything less is hopelessly impractical. But you just wouldn't do it for anything less than the "all singing, all dancing" scheme I suggested.
While we're on the subject of single line bottlenecks, how come the Tonbridge - Hastings line manages to run an up to date commuter service with these bottlenecks ? By your argument, we might as well single the whole thing south of Tunbridge Wells.
Not at all. In fact, my argument is the polar opposite. The equivalent argument (for argument's sake) on my part would be that if you were to extend the Hastings Line services onto the Marshlink, you'd want to get the investment and approvals to re-double the track, improve the signalling and control aspects where necessary, and so on, before extending the service any further - not do the minimum possible to link stuff together. It's very challenging to operate that route too, and recent improvements have often been down to very concerted attempts by local politicians combined with the likes of Network Rail.
Up here we're well aware of how repairs to Ribblehead Viaduct (which turned out not nearly to be as expensive to repair as made out at the time, by the way) were supposed to not be justified by the potential of that line, so you'll have to pardon my extreme scepticism on this point.
The services, history, structural requirements and general public opinion of the S&C is nothing like the Uckfield Line, so it's barely relevant, I think.
Unless all units need to be stabled at their home depot every night, this is surely something that can be managed with diagramming.
If you're out-berthing more than one or two at a time, it soon becomes most practical to put them somewhere where the basics can be done (fuel/water/CET/prep/shunting appropriate to traction), and scattering them too far over the network, especially in places where you would indeed simultaneously have to provide brand new crew options and adjustments for the stock, is something which is quite a step up from the impractical alternative, which is to muck around with existing diagrams and engineering hours and whatever else.
And what makes you think that the Wealden line, alone amongst all of those in Kent and Sussex is the only significant transport corridor with massive potential in one direction but none in the other ?
Nothing does. I've got no doubt with a very expensive scheme to rebuild and enhance it, it could be just as attractive as the BML (for example, and there aren't that many serious contenders in Sussex anyway). But trying some sort of random cobbling-together of existing parts does not a BML2 make.
