The end of the Lavender Line?

You're right my mistake Sorry.

 

Yes, how British. If the travelling public won't fit within existing resources you have to discipline them.

Build more capacity to give the public what they want - you must be joking.

 

I have been to the lavender line a few times, but in my opinion it has gone downhill since Dave Milham sold it a few years ago to the present owners.

 

We go round this regularly. Virtually every developed country has gone through a closure programme. Some closures now look to be poor decisions but it's a small number and we are talking about something that happened over 50 years ago.

 

...... and a lot of the closures attributed to the Doctor took place before 'The Reshaping of Britain's Railways' was written, and a great many more have taken place since.
Ray.

 

...... plus World War Two interrupted a deep decline in use which resumed postwar,

PH

 

It is possible to get a single track between the sewage works and the Estate.

Uckfield is still expanding like an exploding bomb. All of the farm to the east and north of the sewage works from A22 bypass to the old A22 is about to be built over, over 1,000 homes and the microscope is on the fields to the west a further 2/3,000 homes.

On the Itchingfield Shoreham route which would form part of a BML bypass even more homes planned around Henfield after the current mega expansions to the North, West and South of the Crawsham twin conurbation, Southwater, Henfield ( + new large town mooted) and Steyning. As we had to stand from Brighton to Steyning in the peak hours in 1965 due to the massive increase in passenger numbers after the Oxted DEMU were introduced and the line being relaid (just before closure )a reinstated line should run at a operating profit. SR were gearing up to electrify it just before WW2

Getting back to Lavender new management in place so I suspect things will improve for the better rather than tread water.

Brian

 

Is the need to close Clayton Tunnel for repairs (and possible re-opening of Uckfield - Lewes to cope with the traffic) real or just a possibility? as going Brighton - London via Lewes would involve a change of train to get anywhere but London Bridge possibly twice it doesn't seem to save much time over just going via Littlehampton (or a new N-E spur off the Mid Sussex Line) or even just reversing back up to Wivelsfield (with a remodelling of Lewes station)

 

As mentioned above, the reopening of the Uckfield - Lewes line has been being trumpeted by a small-but-vocal minority for decades, from since before BR singled much of it, knocked down half of Crowborough station, rebuilt Uckfield station on the north side of the level crossing and so on. Any closure of Clayton Tunnel for repairs will make not a shred of difference to the fact that, IMO, it will never happen.

I commuted from Eridge to Uckfield for a couple of years in the 1980s and felt at the time, as I do now, that the singling and rationalisation of the line (which I watched happen and was rather sad about witnessing) sounded the final death knell of any chance whatsoever for the line to be reopened throughout - or indeed for what remains to ever be electrified.

One of my fondest memories of it is of standing in what was the down-side waiting room at Crowborough in the depths of winter, a howling blizzard outside and a roaring fire in the grate. For half an hour or so it felt like being on the BR that I was born just too late to remember.