1994
BR proposes auctioning Uckfield station site with a guide price of £250,000. Wealden District officers accuse the BR Property Board of “cynical asset stripping, but a spokesman for the BR Property Board says he is “unaware of any plans to reopen the line”. Rail Minister Roger Freeman orders BR to stop the sale.

Another report for ESCC, this time by consultants Steer Davies Gleave, concludes reopening Lewes – Uckfield as a basic single-track, diesel-operated line could cost £20m, but expenditure could not be justified. SDG predict an annual operating loss of between £500k - £1m and warns “reinstating the line may prejudice the modernisation of the existing Uckfield line”.

Suggestions for a light-rail ‘super tram’ are instead proposed by a Wealden councillor. 

What the WLC predicted and feared would be the inevitable result.

In October, on a foggy Saturday morning, two Uckfield line trains collide head-on near Cowden on a single-track section killing five people including both drivers.