The idea of connecting Tunbridge Wells to Maidstone directly first emerged during the infancy of railway travel and recurred over the decades that followed.

1825 – the proposed Tunbridge Wells, Edenbridge and Snodland suspension railway planned to build a line from Snodland along the Medway to Maidstone, then across country to Hadlow and Tonbridge. Here it would split into two separate lines, one to Tunbridge Wells (terminating close to where the Kent and Sussex Hospital would later be built) and the other at Edenbridge. This proposal, in the year that the Stockton and Darlington opened, was for a horse-drawn monorail. Had it been built it would probably have been converted into a traditional railway within a decade.

During the 1840s a rash of schemes were put forward. From plans deposited at the National Archives it is clear that some followed a very similar course to the one I am proposing from Tunbridge Wells to Paddock Wood via Pembury and Five Oak Green / Capel.

Among these are the Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Gravesend and Eastern Counties Railway Company, The Tunbridge Wells, Brighton and Hastings Junction Railway Company and projected Hastings Harbour Company and The Direct London, Hastings and Rye Railway with a branch from Tunbridge Wells.

However, as Tunbridge Wells became very much a border station between two systems, the South Eastern Railway and London Brighton and South Coast, the opportunities for developing through traffic were ignored. The line between the two Tunbridge Wells stations only began to be used after the companies were merged in 1923 as constituents of the Southern Railway, and by the 1950s hourly Tonbridge to Brighton services ran.

Despite the lack of a properly integrated network, there existed two direct routes between Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone before 1914. One used a sharply curved and graded spur at Tonbridge (the embankment of which can still be seen by walking along Pembury Grove) and the other ran north of Sevenoaks to join the Maidstone East line. In the 1930s a passenger service ran between Brighton and Gillingham, by now reversing at Tonbridge and Strood. However congestion on the line between Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge and Sevenoaks means that simply reviving these would not provide a good enough service today.