Hell is Scotrail 170

On Wednesday this week (12 September), I had quite the most miserable journey home from Edinburgh to Stonehaven in an Abellio Scotrail train.

This was the 1630 out of Waverley and on a normal weekday, not on a Friday, nor a weekend, nor a public holiday.

The wretched class 170 train was so packed that passengers stood until Leuchars.

The refreshment trolley couldn’t move up the train until after Dundee.

The conductor told me that the conditions were par for the course.

One has to ask: is Scotland the only 21st century nation in Europe where local trains operate as long-distance trains and long-distance trains operate as local trains?

This doesn’t work, and never has – and there are those of us who for the past quartercentury have been pointing this out to successive Scottish governments, to Transport Scotland and to Scotrail franchisees.

At school, I was taught that sinners will go to hell in a handcart. My prophecy is that the really wicked among us will go to hell in a Scotrail 170.

GORDON CASELY Crathes, Kincardineshire

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