Letter: Carriage trade

EVERY dog in the street knows the long-distance trains operated by First ScotRail are utterly unfit for purpose.

Yet we have the unedifying picture emerging that First ScotRail shelling out £6 million of our money on giving a coat of paint and new carpets for trains serving central Scotland to Aberdeen and Inverness.

These are the trains recently denounced by Maureen Watt MSP as “horrible” – and no amount of waving of wands will magically transform this much-criticised rolling stock into the real trains Scotland’s long- distance travellers urgently require. Passengers are crushed in these trains, with no leg room, little luggage space and only two toilets per three carriages.

Furthermore, the use of the long outdated underfloor engines makes these train noisy and subject to excessive vibration.

Why is our money being spent on polishing antiques of the future, when the same cash could provide seedcorn for desperately required “real” trains serving Scotland’s cities?

Gordon Casely

Hill Street

Aberdeen