We’re pleased to announce another victory for Tonbridge Line Commuters – we’ve persuaded Southern to run a special train service between Tonbridge and Edenbridge this weekend (22/23 February).
As local passengers will be all too aware, from late December a landslip between Edenbridge and Godstone has curtailed services on the Tonbridge to Redhill line. During the week Southern has been running a shuttle train service between Tonbridge and Edenbridge, but on weekends these trains don’t operate and passengers are forced on to rail replacement buses for the entire journey. This is primarily due to the fact the Network Rail’s resources are stretched and it doesn’t consider it a priority to man the manual points at Edenbridge at the weekend.
We pointed out that during the closure of the A21 the local roads around Tonbridge are very busy, hampering rail replacement bus services. Furthermore, people from the area will be wishing to avoid the chaos on the roads by taking by train wherever possible.
On this occasion, Southern and Network Rail have listened to our concerns and agreed to run the shuttle trains on the weekend of 22/23 February (they told us this wasn’t possible on the previous weekend due to lack of notice and concerns about Storm Dennis). They’ve been clear that the special service this weekend wouldn’t be happening if Tonbridge Line Commuters hadn’t suggested it. It’s also a collaboration with Southeastern, as it will provide train crew to help run the service.
Trains will be run between approximately 06:00 and 22:00 on both days, with rail replacement bus running outside these hours. The specfic times of the trains will be available on the National Rail Enquiries Journey Planner but apparently only the day before (at the time of writing on Friday night only the Saturday trains are showing).
We remain disappointed that on other weekends the shuttle train service will not run. We understand the need to bring materials to the site of landslip, but we believe this is already happening during the week alongside running the shuttle train service. Obviously the real prize will be to open the line as soon as possible, but this is currently not expected until the end of March. In the meantime, at least Southern and Network Rail did listen to our pleas about the particular need for the shuttle to run while the A21 is out of action.