Pain on the train

Pain on the train

Published on 11/01/2013 09:00

I WAS one of the 1,068 Hastings fans who made their way to Middlesbrough for the FA Cup tie last weekend.

A great weekend supporting a fantastic effort by our local team was marred by a farcical journey home, not from our base in Leeds (a swift, on time two-and-a-half hour journey back down the 200 miles to Kings Cross) but by the appalling service from London to Hastings on Sunday.

All three routes into Hastings (Charing Cross, St Pancras via Ashford International, and Victoria) had replacement buses for part of the journey.

Perhaps someone from Network Rail woould care to explain why engineering work was scheduled for all three routes on the same day.

The 23 miles from Tunbridge Wells to Hastings on an ancient double-decker took an hour-and-a-half - an average speed of 16 mph, not helped by the 15 minutes we sat outside Wadhurst station.

At Wadhurst we spotted a team of maintenance workers valiantly relaying the surface of the platform. Was this the reason why the whole stretch from Tunbridge Wells to Hastings was closed or were there really 10,000 people working the whole length of the route?

TIM BOWEN

Warrior Square

St Leonards

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