Single minded?

It is always interesting to read something from Professor Chris Harvie, a true expert in language, history, environment and transport (Letters, 3 January). He could tell us much more but I do not see this switch to rail and sea happening under the Scottish Government. The Borders Railway reopening was instigated by the Lib-lab Coalition in the first Scottish Parliament of modern times. Chris Harvie was elected as an SNP MSP when the SNP took control of the Scottish Government.

One of the first actions of that government was to cancel, or try to cancel, all the rail expansion projects. Full rail links to Edinburgh and Glasgow Airports were completely cancelled, perhaps to show Scotland would not be open for business. The SNP instigated a £9 billion programme of big roads projects, not small environmental roads but big roads to increase the level of road I am convinced the SNP would have cancelled the Borders Railway entirely except for the then MSP, Chris Harvie, and Christine Grahame MSP, who simply would not have stood for it.

As it is, the SNP Government delayed the Borders Railway for three years with the madcap idea of a privately built, privately-run railway, before having to eat humble pie and ask Network Rail for help. Worse than that, they designed the railway down to mainly single track so it was impracticable to run a reliable train service. Even worse, it was redesigned so it could never be double tracked in future. On a double track trackbed new bridges and structures were built only wide enough for single track.

There was the attempt to prevent a station at Stow and the quite public debate that the terminal Tweedbank Station was sufficient for excursion trains when it clearly was not. Under pressure, the Scottish Government was forced to back down and redesign the station, although in such a miserable way that excursion trains have to be pulled backwards down the line by a diesel engine. I would love to know exactly who, in the Scottish Government, saw