On the 1055 from Tonbridge on 13 February 2014 most of the seats are empty

Hastings services to London offpeak are not stopping at Sevenoaks in order to catch up time lost by the landslip at Wadhurst.  We travelled on one of these trains and found that there were nearly 300 empty seats.  That’s nearly 600 empty seats an hour – while people are waiting 15 minutes longer at Sevenoaks.

We have already written about Southeastern’s decision to suspend some stops at Sevenoaks temporarily because of the Wadhurst landslip and about Amber Rudd’s campaign to speed up trains from Hastings permanently by eliminating stops at Sevenoaks and elsewhere.

Today we decided to travel on one of the non-stopping trains – the 1055 from Tonbridge – to find out just how many people are benefiting from the 5 minutes saved.

The train was an 8-carriage (2 x 4-carriage) Electrostar with both units in the 2+2 configuration.  Such a train has 472 seats.

We counted 72 people waiting for the train at Tonbridge; there may have been a few more last-minute boarders before the doors were locked.

On the entire train there were a total of 174 passengers on leaving Tonbridge.  This included two school parties, neither of which boarded at Tonbridge.

That means that there were 298 empty seats.  With two trains an hour, that is very nearly 600 empty seats an hour passing Sevenoaks – probably more since there will not be school parties on these trains throughout the day.

As the train sped through Sevenoaks without stopping the film shows people waiting on Platform 1 for a fast train to London.  Up to the beginning of January the train would have stopped, and they could have boarded it. Now they will have another 15 minutes to wait in the cold until the next fast train to London stops for them.

Incidentally the children in the two school parties were having a great time.  There was no sign that they would have minded the extra 5 minutes it would have taken to stop the train at Sevenoaks and Orpington.