A revived Uckfield line could help to revitalise the port of Newhaven. Although it has benefited from electric trains to Brighton since 1935, the town has never had a regular service to London.
With a revived year-round ferry service to Dieppe and a concerted drive to rebuild the local economy, the case for putting this deficiency right is stronger than ever. Yet with the Brighton line already overcrowded and unreliable, it seems doubtful that a new London service from Seaford and Newhaven could find trackspace on that route.
But while the Brighton line carries up to ten trains an hour each way on its overloaded double track section around Haywards Heath, even off-peak, the Uckfield line carries just one. Simply relaying seven miles of track to Uckfield would unlock the potential of this underused route and make possible a regular train service to London from Newhaven and Seaford.
Opening a further four miles from Eridge to Tunbridge Wells would create a completely new transport corridor in the south-east, linking Newhaven and Seaford with major Kent towns like Tonbridge and Sevenoaks, in addition to London itself.
As the map below shows, possible new routes to London via Uckfield are slightly longer than via Haywards Heath. However, we believe this is more than outweighed by the superior convenience of a through-journey and the potential for completely new travel opportunities that these routes could offer.
Even using diesel trains, which would not be allowed to use enclosed stations like Victoria, potential services could include:
Seaford - Newhaven - Uckfield - East Croydon - London Bridge or:
Seaford - Newhaven - Uckfield - Tunbridge Wells - London Bridge
To give a comparison of distance, London Bridge is suggested as the London terminus on the map below.
Both these service patterns could equally well have Eastbourne as their southern terminus. In any case, the Wealden Line would be an obvious choice for Eastbourne passengers when the Brighton Lline is closed for weekend engineering works.
