Commuting/ Current affairs/ Economics/ Edinburgh/ Entertainment/ Fife/ General/ Newspapers/ Scotland
Calling at Dundee, Broughty Ferry, Balmossie, Monifieth, Barry Links, Golf Street and Carnoustie
29 May 2007 00:49
I have always struggled to come to terms with the fact that there are so many train stations in between Dundee and Carnoustie. I have never travelled on a train beyond Dundee, so I haven’t seen for myself how close they are to each other. I’ve tried to look at them on Google Earth, but it’s difficult to keep track really.
Anyway, I find it difficult to imagine that there is the need to have this many train stations between two towns that are only about ten miles apart. I mean, what is it? One for each golf course?
Bear in mind that Carnoustie itself has a population of around 10,000. Kirkcaldy has a population of over 40,000 and has only one train station to its name. So I don’t really know what Carnoustie and the wee towns between there and Dundee have done to deserve having so many train stations.
I know that not all of the stations are used all of the time. But sometimes I catch a particular train from Edinburgh that stops at every station on the way, including these obscure ones between Dundee and Carnoustie.
I remember a few months back reading an article on Scotsman.com about a proposal to close the Barry Links train station. According to the article, Barry Links station is only used by 26 passengers per year, despite the fact that a train stops there twice a day.
The community of commenters at Scotsman.com is one of the worst going, and that really is saying something. Commenting on this article, many people abandoned what little common sense they might have.
Several commenters even suggested that the problem with Barry Links was not that there were too many stops there — but that there weren’t enough! It’s certainly a novel take on economics. Nobody uses it, so let’s give them more. And never mind the fact that there are half a dozen other stations within a stone’s throw.
Sense kicks in only around comment #38:
If you were starting with a blank sheet of paper (or were playing Railway Tycoon) you would never in a million year puto a stop at Barry Links, for example. Just because it is there now does’t mean it should be kept. The maintenance cost for that station, per person, most be astronomical.
Keeping it would be nice, in a romantic way but you have to ask whether you would be happy if they were talking about putting new station on that site ? Of course not.
Matt T has a really interesting post outlining the ten most used and ten least used train stations. Golf Street is the least busy train station in the UK, apparently serving just eight passengers in the financial year 2004–2005. Eight passengers in an entire year! And its running costs are £33,000 per year.
Barry Links is not so far behind, with 14 passengers.
With numbers like this, combined with the fact that there are so many other stations nearby, these stations ought to be for the chop rather than being celebrated by the Scotsman.com users, none of whom actually appear to have used either station.
Shrieks about what would happen to the local economy of Barry (if it has one) or the impact on the community don’t really wash, especially since the community itself seems far from enamoured with the idea of boarding a train there.
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#1
Mark
29 May 2007 10:07
You want to see all of the pishy wee stops on the west side of Edinburgh if you ever get the train to Glasgow Central…….
#2
Chris Applegate
29 May 2007 11:46
Reminds me of the stories of the Epping-Ongar branch of the London Underground’s Central Line, particularly Blake Hall, a station built literally in the middle of nowhere by the GER in the pre-Beeching era, and which only survived because it got taken over by London Underground as part of its expansion works. It only had six passengers a day by the seventies, and yet it still took them years to get it closed…
#3
Vicky
29 May 2007 21:08
Weird – I often travel to and from Aberdeen, and apart from a rush-hour stop at Carnoustie, I’ve never seen the train stop at any interim stations!
#4
Sheila
7 June 2007 10:25
I live in Broughty Ferry and can explain the purpose behind the building of West Ferry station which was a stop no more than 2 minutes away from B/F. The jute barons moved out of Dundee to West Ferry and Broughty Ferry, at one time there were reputed to be more millionaires in a square mile of West Ferry than lived in the heart of London, as their wealth through the production of jute cloth grew and West Ferry station was built specifically for them. It was still a working station when I was a child and in our age of overloaded roads and congestion looking back it seems that it was short sighted to close so many of these ‘ halts’ along this short distance. As I was growing up hundreds of people who worked in Dundee travelled to work by train, sometimes even going home at lunch time and back for the afternoon’s work. It is only during the last 20 years that the London trains have not stopped in Broughty Ferry. Up until then every train travelling between Aberdeen and London made a stop at B/F. Nowadays 1 Edinburgh train stops at Broughty Ferry in the morning and 1 coming back in the afternoon. A great shame. Does that help?
#5
Will
18 July 2009 11:09
These small stations were essentially Dundee’s metro / commuter rail system, so they made perfect sense (well, most of them, anyway, maybe not Barry Links) until BR withdrew the service in the early 1990s. Rail travel has become much more popular since then, and I’m sure the stations would be better-used today if, you know, trains actually stopped at them! My parents live in Monifieth, and the only train to Dundee all day is at 6:30am — so are the low passenger numbers really a surprise?
#6
Will
18 July 2009 11:09
Aaaand I just noticed the date on your post. Seems I’m a bit late to the party.
#7
Duncan Stephen
18 July 2009 14:18
Don’t worry about the date – thanks for your comment Will!