Maidstone East railway station to platform 1 shows the alignment of a former bay platform. A third track runs as a passing track through the station between the up and down lines. A pedestrian walkway on the railway bridge provides a route to the Medway Valley Line's Maidstone Barracks station on the west of the river. Maidstone's third station, Maidstone West, is south of Maidstone Barracks. There have been plans to redevelop the station for a number of years. In 2005 Network Rail announced that they were in talks with the John Lewis Partnership who intended to build a large Waitrose supermarket on the
Borough of Maidstone earliest in the county – that to Rochester and Chatham – was opened in 1728. In modern times, two motorways – the M2 and the M20 – pass to the far north of the borough and just north of the town centre of Maidstone respectively. The earliest line through Kent was built by the South Eastern Railway. It was not, however, built to pass through Maidstone: instead, a station was built at Paddock Wood railway station, then named "Maidstone Road", some six miles away. It was only in the period between 1844 (when that main line was connected by a