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1 September : Lewes - Uckfield in news again |
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In a hard hitting article in this month's Rail Professional, BBC South transport correspondent Paul Clifton takes a critical look at the recent Lewes - Uckfield study.
Noting the widespread acceptance that Lewes-Uckfield had the best case among English rail reinstatements, he examines why the Network Rail report ended up being so negative.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 03 September 2008 12:30 )
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27 August : Lewes - Uckfield makes RAIL news |
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Leading industry magazine RAIL hits the news-stands across the UK today with a six-page article "The Battle of Wealden" focusing on the long campaign to re-establish the Lewes-Uckfield link.
The first of a major two part feature, today's instalment deals with past attempts to re-open the line under British Rail and more recently with private sector involvement led by Kilbride, culminating in last month's abortive report. This has already been widely discredited and RAIL asks why key positive statements by Network Rail, present in early drafts, were systematically cut out of the final version.
In the next article in a fortnight's time, RAIL will review Network Rail's useful engineering study and investigate why the feasibility report, conducted by East Sussex County Council, ended up being so negative.
Many questions remain as to why the Lewes-Uckfield project - expected to be a trail-blazer among the English re-opening schemes - was coupled-up to what is generally accepted to be a failed business case.
Welcoming RAIL's interest in the campaign, against a backdrop of successful schemes in Scotland and Wales, Campaign Director Brian Hart said: "If we cannot open seven and a half miles of line, with largely intact trackbed, in the busy South East, with obvious local, regional and strategic benefits, what chance is there for any other English rail reopenings?" |
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22 August : Edwina Currie visits the Wealden Line |
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 Edwina Currie visited the Wealden Line today to meet Campaign Director Brian Hart and learn the story of the 39-year battle to restore the Lewes - Uckfield link.
The former Conservative minister (seen here with Brian Hart and producer Tony Francis - right) was gathering material for a forthcoming BBC documentary that she is to present, which will look at the effect the Beeching cuts had in the South. Though the main focus of the programme will be on lines that have been irrevocably lost, the producers were drawn to the Uckfield line because of the long struggle to restore the Lewes link. In fact, although Dr Beeching's notorious 1963 Report proposed the closure of Buxted, Uckfield, Isfield and Barcombe Mills stations, it is not generally known that even he shied away from closing the line altogether, with Crowborough projected to stay open for its London commuters, along with the link southwards to Lewes.
So even if his long-discredited report had been carried out in full, the Uckfield line would still be open today had it not been for the Lewes Relief Road, pursued in the 1960s by East Sussex County Council, whose "Stage 1" severed the the Lewes - Uckfield section in 1969.
Interviewed by Ms Currie, Brian Hart described the effect of closure as '"catastrophic" for both the remainder of the line north of Uckfield and towns right across the Sussex Weald.
In addition, Ms Currie also interviewed Uckfield Town Councillor Duncan Bennett to establish just why local people still feel so aggrieved about the line's closure almost 40 years after the last train ran. Another topic covered was the line's potential role today in relieving an increasingly overloaded network. The programme is expected to be screened this autumn.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 16 October 2008 12:22 )
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14 August : Welsh reopening beats its target |
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Yet another rail reopening project has comfortably exceeded its traffic forecasts.
In what has become a trend with recent rail reopening schemes, the 18-mile Ebbw Valley line linking Ebbw Vale and Cardiff beat its first year passenger target in the first six months of operation.
Once again, it makes us question the reliability of the traffic projections used in the latest Lewes - Uckfield reopening study.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 23 August 2008 10:12 )
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8 August : MP highlights Labour's anti-rail bias |
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Lib Dem MP Paul Holmes has drawn fresh attention to the government's continuing bias against rail schemes.
During Transport Questions last month, the Chesterfield MP revealed that Labour has spent £11.5Bn on 405 miles of major new roads, but has done nothing to increase the size of the rail network.
The best that transport secretary Ruth Kelly could say was that they hadn't actually closed any major routes - and that longer platforms/trains were the answer to getting more capacity.
Well done Mr Holmes for pointing out an inconvenient truth!
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 23 August 2008 10:12 )
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