A new base at Robertsbridge is set to cut Network Rail's response time to incidents on the Hastings line by up to an hour.
Opened in September, the new facility within the Robertsbridge station building has been named after long-term and highly respected Network Rail colleague, George Graham, who sadly passed away last year.
Funding for the George Graham House was provided in part by the Railway Heritage Trust, with delivery handled by Southeastern.
“We’ve opened up Robertsbridge Mobile Operations Manager (MOM) depot so we can respond more quickly to disruption on the line between Hastings and Tonbridge,” explained David Davidson, Network Rail’s Kent route director.
He added: “Before the office opened, we had to deploy MOMs from Ashford or Paddock Wood, which takes significant time. This base allows us to respond faster when things go wrong on the railway so we can fix the railway more quickly and keep our customers on the move.
“It’s been a real honour to name this office after George Graham, one of our colleagues who sadly passed away last summer after spending a significant part of his career working on this line, but also managing the Kent Integrated Control Centre.”
Harry Stevens, station manager for Southeastern at Hastings, said: “The response times will be so much quicker. Now, MOMs can get down to Hastings in 20 minutes, whereas before it was anything up to an hour and a half.”
Lee Harris, mobile operations manager for Network Rail, commented: “Robertsbridge is basically right in the middle of our patch.
“Among other types of incident, we can get called out to things like points failures, and we need to be able to respond quickly so that customers can get on the move again. That means that our new base at Robertsbridge will make a huge difference.”
Network Rail says this is another outcome of the unique partnership it has with Southeastern.
Image credit: Network Rail
Video credit: Network Rail
