According to this piece by Mark Ruskell - The Scottish Green MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Network Rail were close to putting in applications to open stations at Clackmannan and Kincardine, when Talgo were planning on opening a new factory at the former site of Longannet Power Station (which isn't happening now).
Without the factory, is there a business case to extend passenger services from Alloa to Clackmannan and Kincardine?
Three years ago we were on the verge of a thousand new jobs coming to the area.
www.alloaadvertiser.com
Mark Ruskell: Communities must band together for West Fife rail link
I think realistically you've got this question the wrong way around.
Instead, the question should be: is there enough demand to justify what basically amounts to a brand new line beyond Alloa, and if not, why does the chance of building a new train factory change that economic calculation?
Could you extend to Kincardine? Yeah sure why not, the track is there, there's a nice and simple extension to the Glasgow services, let's say a ten mile round trip, and I'm sure you could find a spare 385 somewhere in the ScotRail fleet.
Does it justify the expenditure? Well, probably not.
Which brings us onto the crux of the issue; did the potential Talgo factory change the calculations? Realistically, I doubt it, but it was probably a nice sweetener for the locals, and if you're electrifying the line to Kincardine to link the factory anyway, then two extra single platforms was probably a rounding error in the amount of money ScotGov expected to make back in revenue.
I think this is most likely what we call in the business 'spin' and that actually, NR weren't about to submit planning applications, and instead conversations had taken place with the local authority that most likely stalled when they realised the factory wasn't happening.
Edit: actually on second thoughts I'm certain that this isn't the full story. There is absolutely no way in hell that NR and ScotGov would have spent enough money on design to get to the point of submitting planning approval, and then cancelled it because a factory wasn't happening. If they'd spent the money and were indeed ready to submit planning applications, they'd have submitted them anyway as a political win precisely
because the factory wasn't happening, and it's a way of buying votes in an economically underactive area.
