Making tracks

Your editorial (“Back on track”, 7 September) rightly argues that the encouraging patronage of the Borders Railway should give hope to campaigners for reopening the likes of the Levenmouth branch line.

But the penny-wise, poundfoolish approach to the railway to Tweedbank – with twothirds of the route single-track – has to be avoided if reopened lines are to realise their full potential.

The Borders Railway was built to a specification which it was claimed would deliver the Scottish Government requirement that 92.5 per cent of trains should arrive within five minutes of schedule.

Over most of the three-year period since the new railway opened, Network Rail and Scotrail have failed to reach this target – so the Scottish Government is not getting what it paid for.

We should all learn from past mistakes, including those “critics [who] warned against the folly of spending hundreds of millions of pounds connecting Edinburgh to a sparsely populated area” – among whom was The Scotsman, whose 21 February, 2012 editorial uncompromisingly argued that: “The Borders rail link was agreed in a shameful political deal by Labour and Liberal Democrats in government, carried out by the SNP. Even at this late stage, the Scottish Government should abandon

its plans to press ahead with this scheme beyond Midlothian.”

DAVID SPAVEN Church Hill Drive, Edinburgh