Could it be full steam ahead for the rail line that goes through Cranleigh & Bramley, which has been shut since the 1960s?
The English Regional Transport Association – which has been fighting for years to reopen the line, is holding a public meeting in Horsham on April 27.
The Association’s Chief Executive, Richard Pill, said:
We need all the support we can get, including advocating to agencies like Transport for the South East to show more interest, support and leadership. Especially to funding studies, round-tabling and helping us to move the project upwards to court national recognion as a strategic rail link and helping to put local on a more substantial basis.
Association members also want to see the reopening of the Horsham to Shoreham line, but both that and the Guildford stretches have been closed for more than 50 years. However, much of the original track beds survive.
The association is a voluntary membership-based group and has long maintained that reopening the line with cycle and footpaths. It could provide a “transport leisure corridor which could cut congestion, reduce road traffic, save land, and make modest development more sustainable. It could also offer more direct rail journeys that are laboriously lengthy, costly, inconvenient, or non-existent.
The association also says the proposals would bring places like Cranleigh back into the railway map, making it easier to access and more attractive for visitors.
Not everyone is enthusiastic.
The Public Meeting will be held at The Lynd Cross pub on Springfield Road, Horsham, on Saturday, April 27, at 2 pm.
Guildford to Cranleigh (and Dunsfold New Town) as a light railway is one thing – and probably viable to link an isolated area with growing population with the mainline. But Shoreham to Guildford? – there is no demand for that route, nor viable trackbed. That would be a vanity project – just as the Wey & Arun Canal Trust’s ambition to link their tiny bits of scattered canals.