6 November 2012
New Borders Railway to be enhanced to accomodate tourist charter trains
Press Release from rail author David Spaven – 6th November 2012
At a ceremony in Newtongrange today, Scottish Transport Minister Keith Brown confirmed that Network Rail have been contracted to build the new Borders Railway from Edinburgh to Tweedbank, and announced that the scheme design has been enhanced to allow tourist charter trains [1] to use the 31-mile line’s terminus at Tweedbank. The line will be the longest rail re-opening project in modern British history [2], and the longest railway to be built in Scotland since the Fort William-Mallaig line in 1901.
Re-opening will be the culmination of a campaign which began in the mid-1990s, as described in the recently published book Waverley Route: the life, death and rebirth of the Borders Railway [3] by Edinburgh author David Spaven [4], who said:
“This is a great day for the Borders and Midlothian. The closure of the railway through the Borders in 1969 was a grave regional injustice, and probably the worst of all the notorious ‘Beeching cuts’. It left Galashiels and Hawick further from the rail network than any other towns of their size in Britain.
“The new railway will utterly transform the quality of public transport from the western end of the Central Borders to Edinburgh. When the line re-opens to Tweedbank, trains will directly serve three new stations in the Borders and four in Midlothian – and a purpose-built bus-rail interchange at Galashiels and park-and-ride facilities at Tweedbank will ensure that the benefits of the new line extend to a wide swathe of the Central Borders, including Hawick, Selkirk and Melrose.
“Great credit should go to the Scottish Government for listening to the Campaign for Borders Rail which argued long and hard for the planned Tweedbank terminus to be redesigned and extended to accommodate tourist charter trains, which are typically up to 12 coaches long. The Transport Minister’s announcement today confirmed [5] that the Government now recognises the importance of the tourist charter market for the Borders economy, bringing in new visitor spend to attractions such as Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford, Melrose and the Borders abbeys. This railway is now set to rejuvenate the Borders.”
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[1] Tourist charter trains typically:
(a) offer day or weekend trips between locations which are not linked by scheduled train services,
(b) start in cities or large towns and serve destinations with tourist / historic / sightseeing interest, and,
(c) utilise ‘classic’ rolling stock with large picture windows – hauled by diesel locomotives of interest to railway enthusiasts, or by steam locomotives – in trains of up to 500 passengers in 10-12 coaches.
The Campaign for Borders Rail and the Waverley Route Trust (WRT) have been making the case for charter potential on the Borders Railway since the early 2000s, and undertook extensive research in 2009-10 which confirmed market interest – but also highlighted the failure to design the platform tracks at the Tweedbank terminus to be of sufficient length to accommodate viable charter trains of 10-12 coaches, plus locomotives at the front and rear of the train (two being required as there will be no ‘rounding loop’ at the station).
In 2009 there were more than 80 charter train arrivals at Scottish destinations (excluding football / rugby specials and the Royal Scotsman luxury land cruise). The single most popular destination was Edinburgh, and two thirds of the charters came from English towns and cities, bringing entirely new spend to the destination locations. The CBR / WRT research concluded – conservatively – that around £500,000 of new spend could be attracted into the Borders economy every year by charter train traffic and the Royal Scotsman. The local economic benefits of special trains are particularly well understood in Fort William and Mallaig, where the steam-hauled Jacobite has been an outstanding success.
[2] With 31 miles of new route construction, the Borders Railway will be the longest rail re-opening project in modern British history – two miles longer than the Robin Hood Line, opened in phases from Nottingham to Mansfield and Worksop in the 1990s.
[3] Waverley Route: the life, death and rebirth of the Borders Railway, was published by Argyll Publishing in August 2012. It traces the demise of the railway from the 1963 Beeching Report through the long campaign for re-opening to the planned start of train services from Edinburgh to Tweedbank in 2015. See: http://www.argyllpublishing.co.uk/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=124&Itemid=3&vmcchk=1&Itemid=3
[4] David Spaven, who is an author, rail consultant and campaigner, has spent his working life in and around the railway industry – and is available for comment on 0131 447 7764 / 07917 877399 / email david@deltix.co.uk.
[5] The Tweedbank terminus platform tracks will now be extended to 285m length, enabling commercially viable 12-coach charters to use the Borders Railway.
END OF RELEASE