Recent content by waverley47

I'm getting very confused. Are you saying there's no link to an East - West route to Edinburgh from EK? Of course not, the same as Kilmarnock, and Barrhead, and Paisley don't have direct trains to Edinburgh. Motherwell does, several times a day, although I appreciate for most of the time...

Mainly it's historical, with the north of Scotland services switching over to the ECML with the advent of HSTs, but there are pragmatic reasons why it never switched back. Quite simply, ECML services don't have to turn around at Edinburgh. In contrast, WCML services would either have to...

The physical feeder stations themselves have lead times up to five years or so, and so it makes sense to have ordered these a while ago. The three sat at Cadder (simply a good place to store them, in the SPL compound there) were ordered before COVID, when everyone had hot and cold running...

As of yesterday, Thursday 3rd July 2025, the planning application for the feeder station at Tweedbank is approved. The application can be viewed here, on the Borders Council website, and now shows as 'Approved'. There are a couple of comment pieces on websites such as the Border Telegraph...

That's mainly to do with timekeeping on the Ladybank to Perth section. Previously, with the uptick in services down the single tracks from Inverness, and the initial poor reliability of the HSTs, especially in autumn and winter, meant that southbound Edinburgh services were presenting late at...

Given the lines through Millerhill are permissively signaled for freight only, and have a low max speed (30mph down to 5mph) I think the journey time penalty alone might kill that idea. Let alone the lack of capacity through Millerhill. There's an aspiration for a fully signalled route through...

Mucking around at the Edinburgh end actually buys you more paths to and from the Borders Line, but not to and from Musselburgh. For that you need a four tracked section, most likely between any three of the stations, but that's expensive and a lot of civils.

The section to Longannett though, the speed isn't necessarily the biggest concern, because it's the section where all the stations will be, therefore max speed doesn't matter as much as minimum speed. The section from Longannett to Dunfermline, sure, you could probably increase the speeds a...

The reason for that split was precisely because demand for one side to the other was found to be minimal, bordering on non-existent. It was useful for diagramming when there wasn't anywhere to send them at the other end, as it meant you could run right round without changing ends. Now, with...

I'm very confused as to what you mean here. The Fife Circle goes through Kirkcaldy, unless something has changed in the thirty minutes it's taken me to get home from Waverley.

Back in the mists of time, when I wrote the BCR for the Alloa line, we did investigate a link through to Fife. We totalled up every train ticket, how full the buses were, how many cars crossed the bridges at Clackmannan, and came to the conclusion that it wasn't really worth investigating...

Regards the Almond Chord: Regards Dundee - Glasgow services:

If you were reopening, you'd wire it the whole way through and serve it with extensions to the Alloa trains. The problem is, theres already a line between Fife and Glasgow, it's the Winchburgh Chord. For many years there was 1tpd in each direction from Kirkcaldy to Queen Street, and the fact...

The problem with Haddington is that firstly you've got to build it, and secondly that every hypothetical train you send to Haddington is one that doesn't go to North Berwick. The North Berwick branch is already there, and really needs 2tph, and any possible increase in paths east from Waverley...

There's nowhere that has enough of an inward draw, anywhere along the Shotts or EK lines, for this to be financially viable, with the possible exceptions of Livingston and EK itself. There are already four lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow, you don't need a fifth that takes at a minimum, two...