For years we have been pressing for a second “Ticket Vending Machine” at the busy Kippington entrance to the station.

While there are five machines on the “town” side of the station, Southeastern repeatedly claimed that there was not enough demand for a second one on the “Kippington” side – even though this entrance is the one used by people parking in Southeastern car parks or walking from Riverhead, the Montreal estate or other northern parts of the town.

As a result there have often been queues down the stairs, even at offpeak times, and reports of customers being fined for walking across the footbridge to get the ticket office or the town-side machines.

We finally secured agreement from Southeastern last summer after their Managing Director, David Statham, had walked round the station with us.

At last, and after nine months of inexplicable further delay (there was already power and network cabling for the existing machine), the new machine has been installed and switched on.

Unlike the existing machine it is fairly anonymous – it does not say that it is a ticket machine or look like the existing one; but Sevenoaks customers will soon work it out. Moreover, as expected, it does not take cash – which could be a problem if the existing machine is ever broken.

However we regard the fact that a second machine has been installed at all as a welcome step forward.

PS: There’s also work underway to install ticket machines at Dunton Green and Bat & Ball – where there are currently no ticket purchase facilities at all. We hope that this work will be completed very soon.