Maidstone East Services, 2009

[William Dargan]

Greetings fellow deceased railway pioneers and concerned railway patrons,

I was sitting in the afterlife, when a good friend of mine, Mr Trevithick suggested I join in one of his senances...

Has anyone seen the proposed service plan for the Maidstone Line when the 'great govia upheaval' happens in December 2009?

The County Town looses it's fast service to London (XX:57 Ashford to Cannon Street) and the current Victoria-Canterbury West services will be cut back to terminate at Ashford.
The current stopping service from Victoria to Maidstone East will be extended, also terminating at Ashford.

So the good people of Maidstone, supposedly the heart and political capital of Kent will be reduced to two trains per hour (rather than three) to London, and will loose the direct link to Canterbury.

I can only assume that this will be sold as "passengers told us this is what they want', however, in recent ethereal communication with several guards and drivers who work the Maidstone East 'branch' line - they all claim that patronage of the Cannon Street service has increased over the last four years - to the point the off-peak travel, even on Saturdays, is booming - especially the traveling football fans.

The conspiracy theorists may claim that the loss of the service is designed to force the people of Maidstone, West Malling.etc to drive to Ebbsfleet to pick up a faster service... but I couldn't possibly comment.

William

[jumpedup]

I had heard that the Canterbury West service was to be retained after all (rather than stopping at Ashford) - to make up for the removal of the CTRL service at Wye.

Of course as Southeastern can't be bothered to update their website to remove the informatoin saying that Wye and Higham are to get the 'fast' trains, so no-one really knows...

[lenhamite]

As one who has already been adversely affected by Southeastern's 'updated' service between Lenham and Dover Priory, where does one find out these things? I do 12 hour day and night shifts at Dover and the recent timetable change has already meant that I have to leave half an hour earlier for my night shifts for the extra privilege of standing most of the way between Ashford and Folkestone because there are no free seats on the train. Half an hour might not sound very much, but on top of what with travel amounts to around a 15 hour day, it's another inroad into my sleep time.

Ros

[O.V.S.Bulleid]

Dear Ros

As far as I know the Maidstone East route will lose its hourly Cannon St service but times for the remaining Victoria ones are not currently published but the following link will point you in the direction of the specification: -
www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/passenger/publicregister/current/lser/lsercommitment2.pdf

Yours sincerely
O.V.S.Bulleid