The lines which we are campaigning to reopen or improve were all completed between 1858 and 1888, as follows:
Uckfield - Lewes 1858
Uckfield - Tunbridge Wells 1868
Hurst Green - Eridge (Birchden Junction) 1888
In 1868 a heavily engineered new approach was constructed into Lewes, which curved down through Malling (see below) and allowed trains to reach Brighton without reversal. With the opening of this new line, the section of the original route that linked Hamsey with the Lewes - Keymer Junction (Wivelsfield) line near Offham was closed.
It is by building a new link, whose approximate route is superimposed in mauve on this 1930 Ordnance Survey map, parallel to the course of this line, that the Uckfield - Lewes line can be revived as a through-route.
From the late 19th Century until the early 1960s this network made an unobtrusive but useful contribution to the quality of life in the region, providing the fastest means of reaching London and facilitating a range of cross country journeys between East Sussex and Kent.
Between the wars there were even regular services connecting Brighton with Maidstone and the Medway Towns. By the 1960s, however, this had been cut back to a regular Brighton - Tonbridge link.
Far from being "branch lines" as is sometimes said, this network of routes was entirely double track (except for the very short stretch between the two Tunbridge Wells stations) and might best be compared with the Arun Valley route in West Sussex.
Moreover, speeds of over 80mph were often reached by the faster business trains and the route is arguably better engineered that the successfully electrified Hastings line to the east.
In March 1963, Dr Richard Beeching, the new chairman of the British Railways Board published his now infamous report. Foreshadowing numerous line closures across the country, it aimed to cut out what he saw as the "dead wood" from the rail system.
The rights and wrongs of that report have been throughly debated elsewhere, but it should be noted that it did not call for the closure of any of the routes mentioned above. Indeed, in the early 1960s their electrification was being seriously considered and a new fleet of diesel trains was being built for them as an 'interim' measure. The survivors of this fleet remain in service on the Uckfield line today.
It was around this time however, that plans were being made elsewhere which, in conjunction with a later policy switch by BR, were to prove fatal.
Seeking ways of dealing with the congestion caused by increasing car use in Lewes, East Sussex County Council put forward proposals to build a bypass to the north of the town centre (location marked by green 'X' on map -- see above). There was, however, a potentially expensive obstacle in the way of the road: the railway to Uckfield.
Initially BR seemed ready to take the road issue in its stride, applying in the 1965-66 session of Parliament for a bill allowing the construction of a new piece of line along the route of the original approach to Lewes at Hamsey. At the time, the cost of this new spur, which would have saved the Uckfield line as a through route -- and almost certainly avoided the later closure of the Eridge - Tunbridge Wells link -- was put at just £70,000!
In December 1966, for reasons which are still not entirely clear, BR abruptly changed tack and proposed the closure of the lines from Lewes to Hurst Green and from Tunbridge Wells to Eridge.
As might be expected, its plans met with vigorous opposition from local people, with the Transport Users' Consultative Committee (TUCC -- statutory counterpart of today's Rail Passengers' Committee and required to investigate hardship caused by rail closures under the 1962 Transport Act) registering nearly 3,000 written objections -- a figure described as exceptionally large.
The TUCC held a statutory public hearing on BR's application to close the routes in April 1967 and submitted its report to the transport minister that June. Unsurprisingly, it recommended that all the lines should remain open because their closure would result in "very severe" hardship to a large number of rail users and "considerable" hardship to many more.
It also warned that closure of the system would cause overcrowding on neighbouring lines, with the Hastings line being particularly hard hit -- prophetic words given what actually happened in the following years as the Uckfield line was run down and cut back.
However, while Labour's transport minister Richard Marsh, took heed of the TUCC in respect of the Uckfield - Hurst Green and Eridge - Tunbridge Wells sections, he nevertheless gave his formal consent for the closure of the Lewes to Uckfield link in August 1968. In this decision, it seems likely that his department was influenced both by a county council eager to remove the railway and a BR which had obviously lost all interest in the local network.
After the blow of this announcement, the last months of the service were suffused with sick farce. Because of licensing formalities for replacement bus services, the closure was delayed from January to May 1969, during which time the condition of long neglected structures near Lewes necessitated first single line working and then the complete cessation of train services on 23 February.
To enable rail passengers to continue their journeys south of Uckfield an 'emergency' bus and taxi service was introduced on which rail tickets were valid; finally on 4 May, the end formally came.
Even before the corpse was cold, track removal had begun on 15 April at the site of the new road to clear the way for the demolition of the railway embankment. Construction of what would become "Phoenix Causeway", was already so well advanced that the road was opened by Councillor M. Yarrow, mayor of Lewes on 5 July.
History does not record whether he felt any sense of irony in inaugurating a road designed to relieve traffic congestion, whose construction had just severed a major rail route into the town -- leaving former rail travellers with no choice but to take to the town's roads.
Elsewhere, work soon began to remove the three large railway bridges across the River Ouse in the Lewes area, and within a surprisingly short space of time it became quite difficult even to trace the route of the railway.
But despite the high hopes of the council planners however, it soon became clear that the new relief road of which Phoenix Causeway was to be the first part, would not yield the benefits hoped for. After due consideration, stages 2 and 3 of the scheme were quietly abandoned, with the Cuilfail tunnel eventually being built instead.
It was not long before it was realised that a very serious error had been made in truncating what had been a useful through route.
As early as 1974, a call was made by 17 organisations including all the local town and parish councils -- with the exception of Hamsey -- for the line to be reopened using the route envisaged by BR in 1965. At the time the cost was estimated to be between £1.7 and £2m.
Although no further action was forthcoming, growing calls for the reinstatement of the route eventually led to East Sussex County Council protecting the disused trackbed in 1975 against any building development which could prejudice future reopening. Despite great pressure from property developers, this policy remains in force.
A 1965 passenger survey had shown that more people travelled southwards from Uckfield than travelled north. Consequently, it was hardly surprising that the 1969 closure had a very serious negative impact the operating revenues of the now truncated and unbalanced network. At the same time, the trivial cost savings gained by abandoning little more than seven miles of track were little compensation for the loss.
With this devastating financial blow, the incentive for BR to invest ebbed away and so what was left of the network entered a spiral of decline. Despite a series of promises to electrify the Uckfield line through the 1970s, predictably, nothing happened. Indeed gradual deterioration became the order of the day on a network which became more and more like a working museum with each passing year.
By the early 1980s what was left of the service was crippled by the ever worsening state of the track which forced the imposition of more and more 20mph speed restrictions. With each new timetable a further minute or two was added to journey times.
It came as no surprise, therefore, when in August 1982 BR proposed the closure of the Eridge to Tunbridge Wells service, citing a £750,000 backlog of maintenance and claiming that closure would save another £500,000 on the cost of the Hastings line electrification project which was then its early stages. Despite unattractive rolling stock and a poor timetable, worsened by numerous "temporary" speed restrictions, it still carried around 200,000 passengers a year, amounting to around 700 journeys per day.
Although local people put a stiff fight and the TUCC again found against closure -- arguing that the route should be developed rather than destroyed -- the weakened financial position of a line which had tottered on for 13 years as a link to a dead-end route told against them.
In February 1985, Nicholas Ridley, the Conservative transport minister, brushed aside the TUCC's objections and gave his consent for closure, which took place after the last train on 6 July 1985.
The end of both the Uckfield to Lewes section and now the Tunbridge Wells link left the Uckfield line as an isolated and crumbling route, reliant almost solely on commuter traffic to London and operated by trains based at Selhurst near Croydon.
At the same time it left the Hastings to Ashford line -- which BR had intended to close until well into the 1970s -- as the only purely east-west rail link between East Sussex and Kent.
During the late 1980s it looked as though all BR's 1966 closure plans would soon be fulfilled. Although tentative proposals were even made by BR itself -- whose managers had by now seen the error of cutting the Lewes - Uckfield link -- to contribute £1.5m towards the reopening of the route, these were coolly rebuffed by the Kent and East Sussex county councils. They did not wish to contribute the rest of what had by now become a £6m project.
At the same time, the forthcoming electrification of the East Grinstead line planned for 1987 would leave Uckfield to Hurst Green as an isolated pocket of diesel traction in an otherwise fully electrified area. At what seemed to be the eleventh hour, however, proposals to refurbish the existing route were put forward, along with plans to single considerable lengths of track.
By 1990 this had been done and shortly afterwards a new station at Uckfield was opened on the London side of the level crossing, allowing the closure of the old station and the abolition of what had by now become the gatebox.
Although not inherently dangerous, providing all the correct procedures were followed, the singling scheme implemented was a low-cost one lacking back-up safety systems; moreover, the promised cellular radio system to put the trains in contact with the signalbox at Oxted was delayed.
On the morning of Saturday 15 October 1994, for unknown reasons, an Oxted bound train failed to stop at a red signal at Ashurst and entered a single line section already occupied by a southbound train. Though an alert signalman at Oxted immediately realised the danger, he had no means of contacting the trains -- all he could do was dial 999 in anticipation of the forthcoming crash. When this took place near Cowden station, severe damage was caused to both trains and five people, of whom two were passengers, were killed.
Although driver error was the cause of the accident, it was clear that the low cost singling scheme had been the factor which had made it possible. Now, the projected savings of the scheme were far outweighed for the foreseeable future by the costs of the Cowden tragedy.
In the mid 1990s proposals to privatise the rail network were being implemented. Though the objective was supposed to be increased investment and better services, the immediate effect was to put a block on most investment decisions.
For the Uckfield line this meant a new period of stagnation. It was not until a new private operator, Connex South Central, took over the local franchise in 1996 that railway operators could focus on the long term future of the line.
With the oldest Class 205 DEMUs (Diesel Electric Multiple Units) dating from 1957, there was now an urgent need to address the question of future rolling stock. Rather than continue to maintain a small isolated diesel fleet, it was natural that electrification be considered again and in its application to renew its franchise from 2003 Connex put forward such a scheme.
Unfortunately what was proposed was a scheme whereby there would have been insufficient power to run any more than a sparse service of four car trains. In any case, for a number of reasons Connex's initial application was rejected and the plan was abandoned.
In January 2000, however Connex made a fresh application to renew its franchise, the content of which came as a very considerable surprise.
In a press release, the company announced "20:20 Vision", a £1bn investment plan covering the next 20 years. Under the scheme, the Wealden Line would have benefited from a detailed a two-phase improvement plan which would initially have provided for the 'serious' electrification of the existing Uckfield route and would subsequently see the complete reinstatement of the lines closed in 1969 and 1985.
Unfortunately for local travellers, however, the then Shadow Strategic Rail Authority (SSRA) rejected this application on 24 October 2000 in favour of one from Govia, a concern backed by the GoAhead group. Their successful bid, named "New Southern Railway", went no further than to propose a study on reopening the route from Uckfield to Lewes.
This has yet to be launched. But with a move to a maximum seven year franchise rather than the 20 planned and the SRA reserving for itself planning decisions formerly handled by franchisees, it is unlikely the initiative will now come from Govia.
The campaign continues
Ironically given its past record in promoting the line's original closure, the focus of the action has now moved to East Sussex County Council.
Here, lead cabinet member for transport and the environment, Cllr Tony Reid has been very active in promoting a low cost revival of the Uckfield - Lewes link as the first stage in achieving a restored service between Lewes and Tunbridge Wells.
Working closely with local MPs, he has brought the issue to the top of the East Sussex agenda, bringing the prospect of a revived Wealden Line closer than at any time since 1969.
If you want to be part of the next chapter of this story, click here.