Gordon Casely: Through trains to the north under threat again

DIRECT rail services from London to Aberdeen and Inverness are again under threat. David Middleton, chief executive of Transport Scotland, includes this sentence in his letter of 18 January to my MP Dame Anne Begg:

“It would be remiss not to consider the possibility that existing services to Aberdeen and Inverness (from London) will not be suitably specified in the Department for Transport’s new (East Coast) franchise.” What is Mr Middleton trying to tell us?

It’s all the more worrying that the source for this disturbing news lies within Scotland. The Transport Scotland Rail 2014 consultation ended earlier this week and caused much debate among rail interests.

Nowhere, however, has there been any kind of support whatsoever for ending cross-Border services. Absolutely the reverse. Any threat to cross-Border rail services is of gravest concern.

In support of its case, Transport Scotland has in recent times raised questionable evidence about cross-Border East Coast trains being “underused” by passengers north of Edinburgh. Not in my experience they aren’t, and I travel weekly between Aberdeen and Edinburgh by East Coast.

Any suggestion that through rail services operated by East Coast be withdrawn is probably the single most serious item of transport news for north Scotland since Aberdeen-London services began 150 years ago.

Bland assurances by Transport Scotland that cross-Border passengers might be easily conveyed north on First ScotRail trains are nonsense, and reflect the patronising tenor of the 1963 Beeching Report.

It is a fact that the number of passengers for Aberdeen or Inverness alighting from an incoming ten-coach East Coast train at Edinburgh Waverley simply cannot be accommodated aboard a three-coach First ScotRail train for onward journeys.

It is essential that cross-Border services are left as they are, with existing East Coast trains. We in Aberdeen/Inverness currently operate on the barest minimum of cross-Border service provision.

Withdrawal of cross-Border services neither advances any green argument, nor assists in helping to expand the rail share of the growing air market to London.