The Future
Despite attempts by the Wealden Line Campaign to have the line from Uckfield through Isfield to Lewes reopened to passenger traffic, a July 2008 study concluded that although technically feasible, the line would be "economically unviable". Any reopening might affect the operations of the Lavender Line or entail a move to a new location, however there is no definite statement on this point and in any event the campaign has not succeeded.
The Preservation Society expressed an interest in itself restoring and reopening the line between Uckfield and Lewes in the long-term future. In December 2008, a petition was presented to East Sussex County Council asking it to acquire the trackbed from the Lavender Line's northern boundary to the former site of Uckfield station, to lease back the section and to allow heritage services to be run over it. In April 2009, the Council's Director of Transport and Environment recommended that the petition be refused on the basis that a heritage operation would prejudice the reopening of the line and the costs entailed would divert funding away from core Council services.
Work started in December 2011 on building a halt style platform at Little Horsted together with a picnic area. The weak bridge over the river Uck was cleared and inspection was due in 2012.
Read more about this topic: Lavender Line
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. He is impelled by inertia, rather than curiosity, and nothing is more unlike the submissive apathy with which he hears his fate revealed than the alert dexterity with which the man of courage lays hands on the future.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)