The Railway Magazine – July 2019

PRACTICE&PERFORMANCE

Making a big impact around Edinburgh and Glasgow are the Hitachi Class 385 EMUs. Here, set No. 385025 leads

385112 through Linlithgow at speed on May 14 with the 09.00 Glasgow Queen Street-Edinburgh Waverley.

ALL PICTURES: IAN LOTHIAN UNLESS STATED

A 2+4 HST set exits the Forth Bridge into Dalmeny

station on April 29 with power car No. 43168

leading 1B32, the 13.12 Aberdeen-Edinburgh

Waverley. The external branding of the sets

represents the seven key Scottish cities they will

serve when all 26 are in service.

SCOTRAIL

Scotland’s railways are undergoing a

transformation.John Heaton FCILTassesses the

performance of ScotRail’s new traction.

S

tanding on the concourse of Glasgow

Central it is easy to assess how well the

service is performing. There are no

anxious groups waiting for departure

platforms to be announced and arriving

commuters march confidently towards their

destination. The announcements are routine

and free of constant apologies. It is 08.

on Tuesday, May 21, 2019 – the second day

of a new timetable which has inaugurated

substantial changes.

ScotRail operations director David Simpson

permits himself a moment of satisfaction as his

phone relates the Public Performance Measure

(PPM) is standing at 96% in the heart of the

morning peak. To entertainThe RMso early in

a new timetable is his vote of confidence that

the troubled start to the franchise is now over

and progress is being made.

Wholesale driver migration to other train

operating companies such as TransPennine

Express, which is expanding from Liverpool to

Glasgow via the west coast and Edinburgh via

Newcastle, has resulted in massive recruitment

and training programmes.

Late provision of rolling stock (witness

the production problems of the ‘pocket

rocket’ 2+4 HST conversion programme from

Wabtec) and the Class 385s’ window curvature

‘phantom signal images’ predicament form

but a small selection of the problems affecting

reliability in recent months. The stop-gap

Class 365s drafted in to cover for the Class

385s required even more traction training.

The 07.59 from East Kilbride arrives

on time at 08.31 to disgorge an astounding

number of passengers. It is now rostered

for three two-car Class 156s, a diesel vestige

among a plethora of electric services and a

likely candidate for the next steps in what has

so far been a rolling electrification programme.

Mr Simpson’s experience stretches back

to management training in mid-1980s British

Rail and has recently included route manager

with Network Rail Scotland when many of the

infrastructure improvement plans, from which

ScotRail is now benefiting, were hatched, as

well as a spell with Caledonian Sleepers during

its planned re-equipment.

‘Noisy and slow’

David points out there are now five routes

from Glasgow to Edinburgh and everyone

of them is now electrified, the latest being

the Shotts route that I covered in my ‘Back

and Forth’ article(RM 12/2011),and which

provided such a noisy and slow Class 156 climb

from Uddingston on the 1-in-100, and steeper,

incline to Benhar Summit. This obstacle is now

surmounted with no more than a purr from

modern Class 385 electric units.

Routes such as this one, like the Bathgate

line, are part of classic economic urban

regeneration theory which has created

paths to education and employment in

a choice of Edinburgh or Glasgow from

de-industrialised communities that sit between

the two metropolises. The latest step forward

is the 8.6-mile link between the Glasgow to

Cumbernauld route and the Edinburgh to

Falkirk Grahamston line to provide the fifth

electrified route.

The Scottish Government is running a

huge budget deficit to finance packages such

as improved transport – in the expectation

of more employment, lower benefit

expenditure and a higher tax-take. There

are now 13 ScotRail through trains per

hour between Scotland’s two largest cities:

four on the Edinburgh to Glasgow (E&G);

four via Bathgate; two via Shotts; two via

Cumbernauld; and one via Carstairs.

Of course, if you want to go from the

middle of Glasgow to the middle of Edinburgh,

the fastest route is clearly the direct route via

Falkirk High. In recent years the addition of

extra stops to serve residential expansion, more

trains resulting in congestion and the use of

Class 170s which, despite being capable and

comfortable are regrettably not the speediest

PROGRESS

16 •The Railway Magazine• July 2019