Reviled for years, are we falling back in love with railways once more?
The golden era of trains is over but as old lines reopen, the signs are that Scots are ready to get back on track by John MacLeod
ST ANDREWS boasts Scotland’s oldest university and is recognised the world over as the home of golf. Home to some 20,000 people, it is among Scotland’s top ten tourist destinations, full of characterful medieval buildings and a glorious beach.
But since 1969 it has had no railway and that is now the matter of an intense local campaign, as the town’s roads and infrastructure increasingly struggle to cope with the summer surge of visitors and the many locally resident commuters.
The ‘StARLink’ campaign, as those pressing for the return of trains to St Andrews style themselves, will win particular ammunition on September 9, when the Queen will formally open the restored Borders Railway, riding in state on a burnished steam train with the Duke of Edinburgh, Nicola Sturgeon and the inevitable chain-gang of construction bosses and civic dignitaries.
On the day when she will also become the longest-reigning monarch in our history, the Queen will enjoy the revived journey from Edinburgh Waverley to Tweedbank, and will no doubt hear of hopes that the track will eventually stretch to Hawick. As she marks more than 63 years on the throne, she may take quiet pleasure in this reversal of one of the most regretted, darkly disputed episodes of her rule.
Shortly before his death in March 1985, Dr Richard Beeching, engineer, quangocrat and infamous author of that March 1963 report, The Reshaping of Britain’s Railways, felt his abiding public ignominy bitterly as he lamented: ‘I suppose I’ll always be looked upon as the axeman, but it was surgery, not mad chopping.’
Yet nevertheless the operation ended with the closure of dozens and dozens of branch lines, more than 2,300 railway stations, the withdrawal of such beloved railway steamers as the Clyde’s Jeanie Deans, and the abandonment of some 5,000 miles (almost a third) of Britain’s entire railway network, as greeted in wistful song by Flanders and Swann:
No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe
On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road. No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street. We won’t be meeting again On the Slow Train... The Beeching cuts saved £18million a year – with, inevitably, 70,000 redundancies. They reflected a much bigger cultural shift, both the inexorable rise of private car ownership and the growing switch of freight from rail to road. But it is only fair to point out that even more track had been closed in the 1950s, without any part taken by Dr Beeching – and that his second, no less eye-watering report in 1965 was firmly quashed by the new Labour administration.
ALL over Scotland, deserted lines and abandoned stations can still be seen. What was once the route in Edinburgh from Slateford to Balerno is now a cycle track. The viaducts and abutments of what was the Callendar and Oban Railway, whose central section from Dunblane to Crianlarich closed in September 1965, hastened by a Glen Ogle landslide, are still visible in Perthshire.
Other ruins reflect lost opportunities. The northern spur of that line, to Ballachulish, was never bridged over Loch Leven to reach Fort William, and perished in 1966 – a forlorn signal still stands by the A82. The Invergarry and Fort Augustus run never won the vital extension to Inverness, thanks to the determined lobbying of rivals, and died on January 1, 1947.
When I was a boy in the 1970s, the platforms of the former Whiteinch station still stood, a reminder that what remains Glasgow’s formidable suburban railway network had once been still more complex.
The Edinburgh suburban line was neither as useful nor as lucky, closing in 1962. And other routes were never built at all. Although proposals were made and plans drawn up, trains would never puff to Aultbea or Ullapool in Wester Ross, while the soap magnate Lord Leverhulme would not in the end bring railways to Lewis.
As late as the 1980s, the state took a jaundiced view of British Rail. Admittedly, if you are old enough to remember it, a train journey 30 years ago was unreliable and uncomfortable. Rolling stock was venerable, the stations shabby, the staff surly. Carriages were rarely cleaned. And what passed for the catering was a national joke.
Margaret Thatcher made no secret of her personal loathing of train travel, but even she had the sense to recoil from the Serpell Report in 1982, which proposed drastic reductions of the network. A particularly ludicrous detail of Sir David Serpell’s Scottish scheme was the closure of both lines north of Crianlarich, as if all West Highland passengers sought only its famous station tea-room.
Passenger numbers had been in steady decline since 1957 and, as one observer mused, ‘in many ways, 1982 represented the nadir of Britain’s railways. That year saw the lowest number of passenger journeys of the second half of the 20th century, the lowest level of passenger miles, and the lowest (real) level of passenger revenue since 1968.’ For all the controversy still surrounding the since-privatised operation of our trains, and recent steep fare increases, the passenger experience today is far better. We have modern engines and carriages. Breakdowns and delays are much less frequent. Station concourses are bright, clean places, replete with glitzy shops and cafés of the ‘Croissant de Paris’ variety.
And, these days, we feel very different about trains in principle. We have to a large degree fallen out of love with the car. The morning commute, by road, is for most a signal trial.
This week, statistics showed traffic is up again by 2.3 per cent in volume, with average speeds down to a miserable 24mph. Parking, be you in Edinburgh or Oban, grows ever more fraught – and we all know we should care about the environment.
It is nearly 30 years since the first disused line in Scotland was reopened – when, in March 1986, British Rail restored the service f rom Edinburgh to Bathgate, chiefly for the benefit of Livingston new town. And the success of this, and an uneasy awareness about the indifferent links between Glasgow and Edinburgh, embold- ened our rulers to commit to reviving another one in 2007.
This fourth, direct railway link between our two principal cities is the Airdrie to Bathgate line. It took three years to complete, cost some £300million and boasts new, delightfully named stations at the likes of Caldercruix and Drumgelloch.
It is especially appreciated by the people of West Lothian and, if you are not in a hurry, the frequent service by this route between Helensburgh and Edinburgh Waverley is a relaxed way between Glasgow and Scotland’s capital.
THE new l i ne gives access to a host of educational and economic opportunities for young people in the post-industrial towns and villages of that forgotten, midland Scotland, and by the end of its first full year in operation passengers had taken to it avidly... and wholesale.
‘It is good news,’ enthused Robert Samson, manager of Passenger Focus Scotland. ‘The reopening of the line and the frequency of services on offer has been attractive for passengers and has opened up new opportunities for people to change their way of travel.’
Now the new Borders Railway will restore train connections to villages in Midlothian and the wider region which have not enjoyed them since the original Waverley Line, despite incandescent agitation for its survival, succumbed to the Beech-
ing hatchet in 1969. The new line will reduce carbon emissions and, according to analysts, will cut road accidents by around six a year. It will be a new and important tourist gateway and will expand housing opportunities, benefiting the national Scottish economy by an estimated £33million a year.
The opening of the line will also end four decades of unenviable status for the Borders as the largest region in Britain without a train service. And it is but the latest step in the slow, sure recovery of Scottish rail travel.
In the past decade, passenger numbers on our trains have surged by more than 30 per cent. Peak fares have been capped since 2013 and many off-peak fares have actually been cut.
Investment can be seen on every front – such as the recent, magnificently refurbished station at Edinburgh Haymarket, or the ongoing works to electrify the main service between Glasgow and Edinburgh, cutting average j ourney- time to 42 minutes. Beyond this are prospects of a high-speed line by 2024, the chief frustrations being the tunnel constrictions at Glasgow Queen Street and the shortage of platforms at Edinburgh Waverley.
Works on the Inverness to Aberdeen service will include two completely new stations, at Dalcross and Kintore, and will improve the Highland Main Line to allow an hourly service between Inverness and Perth.
Not everyone has quite got with the programme, however. Edinburgh’s suburban l i ne, f or instance, could have been modernised and reopened for a frac- tion of the cost of the city’s new and contentious trams – although Edinburgh has an unfortunate history in public works generally.
The appeal of the train is evident. You can relax aboard, work, or read. Inter- city services now boast onboard wi-fi. Trains are not vulnerable to rush-hour congestion, nor forced to fume for an age in long tailbacks.
The safety record is exemplary. We have not had a fatal train smash since the Polmont disaster in 1984. You can board without the indignities endured at every airport, and step off at the other end, rested and unflustered.
IT is small wonder that the people of St Andrews now press for reconnection to the network. As far back as 1989, disturbed by congestion and gridlock at the Open golf championship, the Scottish Tourist Board expressed concerns to the local district council, urging them to press for restoration of train services. In that same year, StARLink was founded.
A quarter-century on, and the issues raised by the tournament are even worse. There are also proven economic benefits to a new rail link, along the lines of ‘if you build it, they will come’.
A railway connection invites new residents, new employers, new enterprises. As StARLink’s website puts it: ‘The concept of a “turn up and go” railway enabling people to travel easily to do business or study in adjacent settlements is seen as a major driver of growth and employment. The other Fife towns, such as Cupar and Dunfermline, are not attractors but suppliers of people, as is Dundee. The improved connectivity which a railway to St Andrews would bring would benefit them all, as well as bringing money into St Andrews, thus benefiting the Fife economy.’
Underpinning StARLink’s endeavours is widespread incredulity that a town of such importance lost its railway in the first place. According to David Henshaw, author of The Great Railway Conspiracy: ‘There’s a consensus that St Andrews should never have left the rail network in 1969.
‘The permanent population is not large but it’s a university town on the outer edge of Edinburgh commuter territory, and home to major golf tournaments, factors that add considerably to the case for reinstatement.’
The late Professor David Daiches was still more succinct. Closure of the line from Leuchars to St Andrews was, he thundered, a ‘monstrous abolition’.
Now, 25 years after their campaign began and in a very different climate from the pomp of Dr Beeching, the people of St Andrews may finally be on the brink of renewed access by rail. It would reintegrate them i nto wider civilisation, for the very rite of train travel is civilisation in itself.
‘I like trains,’ mused Anna Funder, in her quiet memoir of life the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. ‘I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.’