Railwatch 087 - March 2001

Scotland

By David Hansen davidh@spidacom.co.uk

Scotland's Passenger Railway RDS Scotland submitted a comprehensive response to the document, which was issued by the Scottish government. We generally welcomed it, though we would have done a lot more in it. A particular omission in the document was mention of electrification. Scotland may be different from the rest of Europe, but it is highly unlikely that Scotland is right and the rest of Europe wrong about electrification, especially when we have abundant potential for renewable electricity generation. Perhaps the much talked about, but seldom seen, joined-up thinking is needed. We wait with interest to see what the SRA does with the Scottish contract.

More stations There is a trickle of new stations in the offing. Beauly is getting through the approvals process. Howwood should be open when you read this. This trickle is in marked contrast to the relative flood under the much-maligned old system. The Larkhall scheme, which has as much to do with Anniesland and Maryhill as Larkhall, is still stuck in a rather childish argument between Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive and the Scottish government. Instead of blaming each other, how about getting on with it, please?

Train delays Many words have been written on Hatfield. I will only add that never in the history of UK railways have we seen such a debacle. Faulty tracks have been responsible for some bad crashes, including Hither Green where dozens of passengers died. Never before has railway management run around like headless chickens. Those who have campaigned for the railways feel very let down when trains from England arrive hours late for no good reason.

Crash investigationFor the first time since 1840 people now have good reason to doubt the accuracy of Railway Inspectorate reports. No train with a class 91 locomotive on each end has ever run in Scotland, or any other part of the East Coast main line, but the Railway Inspectorate tell us that one crashed at Hatfield (in its second interim report). This is a truly shocking turn of events and it reflects extremely badly on the party politicians who transferred the Railway Inspectorate to the Health and Safety Executive in 1990. The air and maritime equivalents of the Railway Inspectorate did not suffer this botch-up. It is long past time that the Railway Inspectorate was transferred back to its correct location within the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, before its reputation, built up over 150 years, is tarnished any more than it has been. Doing what is possible to prevent crashes is a vital public interest and inaccurate reports undermine the whole process.

British Transport Police While on the subject of crash investigation the activities of the police in the Motherwell derailment show how low things have sunk. Passengers on the derailed train were falsely imprisoned by the police for several hours, as were the crew. In the past the police took names and addresses and obtained statements later. This very sensible practice now seems to be old police and in new Britain we need new police. Exactly what the imprisoned passengers could say about a train falling off the tracks at a set of points is unclear, "there was a bump and the train stopped" perhaps. This sort of stupidity is quite likely to result in the British Transport Police suffering the same fate as their colleagues in the airports (taken over by the geographical police force) or the docks (replaced by the private sector). This would be a pity as a railway police force has a lot to offer, if it is run competently.

More space pleaseVirgin Trains has decided to lengthen trains on order for the West Coast contract by one coach. Our concern is that Virgin has yet to make the same decision on their CrossCountry trains. The new trains will provide more seats, but there are concerns that many of these new seats will be occupied by luggage for which there is no space elsewhere. Passengers on these trains are not the Identikit passenger with a briefcase the Franchise Director/SRA seems to assume travel on trains. Passengers on CrossCountry trains consist of service personnel, oil workers, grannies, students, people moving pets, a whole spectrum of society. The one thing they have in common is luggage, lots of it.

Guided buses The consortium that was to build the City of Edinburgh's foolish guided bus project has pulled out.

Scottish government This is showing its true colours more and more. Finding £240million for a £300million motorway which will plough through churches, houses and businesses in Glasgow is no problem at all. Finding far less than half of this for a full Borders rail link seems to be difficult. It's all very strange, though perhaps understandable when one realises that the First Minister is driven from St Andrews to Edinburgh every day.

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