Rail campaigner champions Fife

A rail campaigner has challenged the speakers at a national conference to enhance Fife’s rail network and to ensure stations are not bypassed when new trains are introduced from next year.

Former Fife councillor Jane Ann Liston of St Andrews was attending the Mackay Hannah Annual Scottish Rail Conference in Edinburgh this week in her role as secretary of Railfuture Scotland when she asked for, and received, an assurance that the new Virgin East Coast trains running between London and Aberdeen would continue to stop at Leuchars.

She also cited the campaigns for line reopenings at Levenmouth, Newburgh and St Andrews, as well as the proposed extension of the Alloa line through to Dunfermline, as examples of important potential enhancements to the rail network which would be worthy successors to the Borders line.

Afterwards Ms Liston said: “The title of the conference was ‘Investment, Renewal, Partnership and Challenges’.

“Well, we have plenty of the last in Fife so I would welcome some of the other three.

“I was particularly encouraged by the visionary approach of Abellio’s executive director Charlotte Twyning, who seemed genuinely interested in the four campaigns that I mentioned, so much so that she has promised to arrange a meeting, particularly on the St Andrews case, to which I am very much looking forward.”