South Eastern Railway (SER) announced with considerable fanfare earlier this month a new weekday express service between Hastings and London Charing Cross. From 14 December one train per day each way – the 8.05 from Hastings and the 16.11 from Charing Cross – will stop only at St Leonards Warrior Square, Battle, Tunbridge Wells, London Bridge and Waterloo East.

The journey time between Hastings and London Bridge will be cut on these services to 1 hour 18 minutes, with a further ten minutes to and from Charing Cross – about 14 minutes quicker than the fastest current journey.

The new trains will have just four coaches, arrayed with 2-plus-2 seating and tables “to facilitate a productive journey”.

Helena Dollimore, MP for Hastings and Rye, acclaimed this initiative as “brilliant for our area… Securing a faster train service for our town has been one of my top priorities as our local MP. This new service is great news for our commuters and for our local shops, hotels, pubs, and restaurants that rely on tourists coming down to visit us.”

What neither the rail company nor Ms Dollimore has been so eager to publicise is that the morning express train will be classed as a peak service – and charged accordingly.

At present the 8.15 train from Hastings on the Charing Cross line (arriving at 10.07) is treated as off-peak, and a return ticket to London stations costs £45.20 whether bought at the station or online. Railcards will reduce that fare by a third.

By contrast, travel to London by the express 8.05 will be charged at peak rate, currently £44 for a single or £82.20 for a round trip. A spokesperson for SER told HIP: “This is an additional train – the fastest service we can run between Hastings and London and at the earliest possible time. It will give our customers a choice between a fast ‘peak’ train at 8.05 taking 74 minutes between Hastings and London Bridge or a slower ‘off peak’ train at 8.15.”

The company has stated that it is “trialling these new services to assess their demand and benefit to customers”. In a similar vein, Ms Dollimore refers to them as “a pilot service. If we want it to stay, we all must use it to show the demand.”

However, Mark Sullivan, a transport consultant who has studied the southeastern network over a long period, questions whether the new service will target the right market.

“The number of daily commuters to London has declined as more people work from home two or three days a week,” he says. “But off-peak travel is growing. I would advise Southeastern to schedule the new faster morning train to depart from Hastings 30 to 40 minutes later, so it arrives at Charing Cross after 10.00, charge it at off-peak rates, and market it for the day-visitor to London.”

A footnote: older travellers may recall some peak-time trains in the pre-Covid era which achieved comparable times to the new service by not calling at London Bridge and making a first/last stop out of London at High Brooms.

Tapestry Ticketing

Last month SER offered 1,066 free tickets for schoolchildren in Hastings to visit the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum, following another initiative of Ms Dollimore. A company spokesperson has told HIP that, as of last week, 800 of these have been allocated. Schools that wish to take advantage need to show a reservation at the museum before booking.