Aha. I’m on my Easter / study break at the moment, so I’ve not had to get on a train for weeks. I’ll probably make a trip to visit the library this week though.
According to The Scotsman, Fife – Edinburgh is the worst-performing rail route in Scotland.
It is a rare occasion when a train arrives on time. Most of the problems seem to occur at Inverkeithing. It’s evil. We’ve been promised new trains and to be fair they came. But there aren’t enough of them. Three carriages is rarely enough in peak times. Some trains on the way back still have only two carriages! I feel sorry for all the people who get on at Haymarket and South Gyle, who are often lucky to get a seat.
Some of the timetabling makes me scratch my head aswell. Two fast trains (one even faster than the other because it doesn’t even stop at Inverkeithing) arrive at Kirkcaldy within about five minutes of each other. They must arrive at Edinburgh within minutes of each other. I know this because when I took the second train we got stuck behind the one that does stop at Inverkeithing. I know the trains come from different directions, but they surely could have organised this better.
The move comes as the latest punctuality figures showed that more than one in five trains on the Fife-Edinburgh route arrived late last month, delaying thousands of commuters…
First ScotRail trains were also stopping at stations longer to cope with more passengers. The line is used by 4,500 commuters a day and is the fastest-growing rail route into Edinburgh, with total passengers up by 18 per cent in the past year.
Planned improvements are expected to include timetable changes in an attempt to make trains run on time.
I’ve been whinging about the train service between Fife and Edinburgh for years now. Until now I’ve never believed that I was the *only* person to realise that the commuter belt has moved out from Aberdour to Kirkcaldy in the time I’ve lived here (4 years)
My favourite two examples of the ridiculousness of the train service is a) the 7.13-ish Virgin Trains service into Edinburgh, which is made up of two trains – one of which is kept locked and b) the early and extremely busy Dundee/Aberdeen trains (2 carriages) which arrive just after the 5, 6, 7, 8 carriage Fife Outer Circle trains.
It’s madness.
Whenever I go home, I go via Haymarket which means I’m unfortunate and have to get on the edinburgh-fife train at haymarket. It isn’t too pleasant!
there’s one train from KDY at something like 22.12 which stops at each station, then a Virgin(?) about 10 minutes later which only stops at Inverkeithing. The earlier train seems to stop for 10 minutes just before Inverkeithing to let the faster train overtake it.