Scotland's railway roadmap: think tank reveals wish-list for our train network
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news...p-think-tank-reveals-wish-list-train-network/
I'm really just posting this latest output from Railfuture for the record. I'm not sure if it adds anything to the discussion, and with the exception of three or four items, most of it's pie in the sky, but here it is anyway.
The mind blows why Grangemouth hasn’t been proposed yet. An estimate of around 400k a year...
The problem with Grangemouth is that the branch faces the Glasgow direction. Grangemouth has varied commuter flows but more people commute to Edinburgh, Falkirk, Stirling and the Linlithgow/Bo’Ness area. If you ran a 2tph Grangemouth-Glasgow via Cumbernauld service, by far the biggest flows on the whole line would be Grangemouth-Falkirk.
You have several ways you could run a Grangemouth service.
Idea A
2tph Grangemouth-Glasgow Queen Street via Cumbernauld. The most likely and most spoken about option would be to extend the former Queen Street to Grahamston service to Grangemouth. This would provide a solid (and likely very busy) half-hourly shuttle between Grangemouth and Falkirk, while maintaining the service towards Glasgow for the likes of Stepps and Gartcosh. Given that Grangemouth has fairly decent flows towards Edinburgh, Larbert, Stirling & Linlithgow, Grahamston could become a very busy interchange. It would mean finding an alternative Edinburgh service for Camelon, Falkirk Grahamston and especially Linlithgow & Polmont, likely from the Stirling direction. It wouldn’t affect Stepps & Gartcosh negatively as the vast majority of their passengers are travelling to Glasgow. Cumbernauld and Springburn have seen a sharp decline recently but the majority are travelling to Glasgow or beyond.
Idea B
2tph Grangemouth-Glasgow Queen Street via Croy. Benefits of this are that it would probably be a faster service, and allow you to leave the Cumbernauld service untouched. It would provide Falkirk Grahamston with a decent service to Glasgow for the first time, and pending capacity it may allow the Stirling/Alloa services to speed up and skip Lenzie & Bishopbriggs, depending on commuter flows.
Idea C
1tph extension of the Dalmuir-Cumbernauld/Argyle Line services. This is more of an add-on to one of the above, and may be unlikely. It may not benefit Grangemouth much, but would link Falkirk with Motherwell, Coatbridge and South Lanarkshire.
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