The Anonymous Widower

Trains To Bexhill

I went the one-train way to Bexhill from Clapham Junction.  This may by convenient, but it is rather slow.  It takes one hour fifty three minutes from Victoria and there is just one comfortable Class 377 train every hour during the day.

Class 377s At Bexhill

You can do the journey in one hour forty one minutes using HS1 and changing at Ashford from St. Pancras, but as with Victoria, there is just one train an hour.

To illustrate the poor train service in this part of Sussex, if you go from Charing Cross to Hastings, you can do it normally in about one hour forty-five minutes, on a train with innumerable stops. At the moment a lot of the services are replaced by buses due to landslips. If you read Wikpedia on the Hastings Line, you’ll see how it was built by the worst of Victorian gerry-builders and how some of the line has been single-tracked, so that normal-sized trains can use the line. Until 1986, the line was operated by special narrow trains.

It would seem that something ought to be done.

There is an unelectrified line called the Marshlink Line, that links Hastings to Ashford. There is a proposal to upgrade and electrify this line, so that high speed commuting services from St. Pancras, can serve Hastings, Bexhill and Eastbourne.

As an aside here, some years ago, I looked at a business proposal in Hastings. After driving to meet a guy there, I had to go to see a client near Gatwick. It took me nearly two hours to cross half of Sussex in a fast car, as the roads were completely inadequate.  Since then the Hastings by-pass has been chopped, so surely creating a modern railway from Ashford to Eastbourne and on to Brighton and Portsmouth, should be a priority?

I can’t find any reference to how much it would cost to upgrade the line, but it would surely benefit more people than the proposed hundred million pounds, that are being spent according to reports in Somerset.

March 5, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Bexhill, Sussex, Trains