Track stars

it’s great that, after years of delay at Holyrood, the project to restore rail services to the central Borders is well and truly under way, with work evident all along the line from Newcraighall through Midlothian to Galashiels and Tweedbank. Our civil engineers, once given the go-ahead, are well able to deliver a well-prepared project.

Lord Steel (your report, 7 January) is right to express his view that all this could have been avoided had politicians worked together to prevent the line being shut in 1969 in the first place. We would still have had a double track railway all the way from Edinburgh to Hawick.

One thing he didn’t mention, however, is the possibility that the timetable proposed may not be reliable since, with the restored line being predominantly single track, the three passing loops being built have been so shortened that it has been authoritatively calculated that a delay of just two minutes will result in the train heading the other way being held up.

I’m sure the line will emulate the success of the re-opening between Edinburgh and Bathgate in terms of patronage. It would be a shame, however, were it also to suffer from the reliability problems that line faced due to the amount of single-line working with which it was at first encumbered.

Only in the past few years have these problems been resolved by restoring double track throughout as part of the further line re-opening from Bathgate west towards Airdrie.

The least we should expect for the central Borders is that the three loops be lengthened from the currently planned 9.5 miles to the 16 miles envisaged when the project was at last tendered in 2009, and that a halt be brought to bridges being built over the railway which prevent future double-tracking underneath.

It is ironic that this rail project is paying for improvement works to allow for extra road capacity on the Edinburgh city bypass at Sheriffhall, but constrains its own future improvement at locations such as Falahill.

We are grateful to the Scottish Government for sticking by this project over many years, but, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. A stitch in time saves nine.

Lawrence Marshall

Capital Rail Action Group

King’s Road

Edinburgh