Steyning Line - Retrospective

Retrospective

Although initially conceived as a conduit for services to the south coast, the worth of the Steyning Line was ultimately restricted to the small villages that it served. That its full potential was never realised can be explained by three interlinked factors. Firstly, the through connection between Brighton and Guildford was rendered difficult by the inconvenient timetabling of connections. Passengers changing at Horsham from a Cranleigh Line service to a Steyning Line service and vice versa usually had a tiresome wait before their connection arrived. For example, the 1964-65 British Rail timetable reveals that a passenger taking the 0625 from Brighton would arrive in Horsham at 0728 with the next service to Guildford was 25 minutes later. Worse off was the passenger arriving in Horsham at 1221 to find out that the connecting train had departed 12 minutes earlier. The timetabling in this case is particularly difficult to understand as the service was scheduled to wait 10 minutes at Cranleigh due to congestion at Guildford.

The second factor was the limited service which could be operated on the Cranleigh Line, mostly single track, which resulted in timetabling constraints. Doubling of the track and reinstatement of the south spur would have gone some way to alleviating this problem and allow fast or semi-fast services. However, given the state of the economy after the Second World War, such investment was never a realistic possibility for perceived railway backwaters such as the Cranleigh and Steyning Lines. This links to the third factor, the perception by British Rail managers, who failed to appreciate the potential usefulness of the lines if co-ordinated effectively. Once Beeching had announced his programme of closures, it was taken as a given that the lines would close and services were gradually run down.