Photo by tallpomlin
There has been, however, a bit of disinformation about it in the Scottish blogosphere. I even read one blogger who claimed that Glasgow would not now have a direct service to London. I guess the obfuscation is natural given that Glasgow is currently embroiled in a mud-slinging by-election campaign.
So let me give you a bit of history: East Coast main line trains were never meant to go to Glasgow.
Way back in the mists of time - the late 90s, if you can remember them! - there were two franchises which ran trains from Scotland to London. Virgin West Coast ran their services from Glasgow down the west coast main line to London Euston, while GNER ran their services from Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness to London King's Cross down the east coast main line.
It was an arrangement which had them as competitors while at the same time not meeting at any point during the journey.
However, the west coast main line was a nightmare. Railtrack were making huge promises to upgrade and rebuild, but precious little in the way of planning was being done. GNER saw an opportunity and went for it - they lobbied the government to allow them to run services from Glasgow to London down the east coast and the government, never a fan of Thatcher's golden boy Richard Branson*, agreed.
Virgin went mental, of course, but in truth there was not a lot wrong with the decision. It gave more train services, a better choice to the public, and a bit of competition to keep the two companies on their toes.
Not long after, Virgin announced that they were going to start running trains from Edinburgh to London down the west coast. GNER went mad, and even threatened court action, but their own actions in doing practically the same thing had tied their hands.
GNER of course eventually lost the franchise for the east coast after promising too much money to the government. Then National Express promised too much money to the government and they will lose the franchise in early December. East Coast will fall into public ownership, the first time an intercity operator has done so.
But in doing that, the government is taking it back to the original franchise commitments - and that means pulling out of Glasgow. In truth, there is not much need for the service any more. The west coast main line has been upgraded and Virgin operates an improved and much faster service that knocks spots off the East Coast one.
Other operators, including my own employer, offer services to the North-East of England. Indeed, it looks like we're being lined up to take the slack if East Coast do pull out.
I'm for more services on our railway, everywhere. But actually, the passenger won't lose out much. The East Coast franchise is being taken back to it's roots and other operators will run services to replace them from Glasgow. But losing any direct service between two large cities looks bad at first glance, particularly if you wilfully use some lies about it for your own party political ends.
*Although God loves a trier...
3 comments:
Your final link seems to have the wrong picture on it. I'm sure it's meant to be Branson, but it looks instead like some curious elderly cult leader..
I understand where you're coming from - but its not totally accurate - there has always been diversity in the routes taken into Edinburgh and Glasgow. You're right in that GNER vastly extended the number of services running up the East into Glasgow - but they'd always been there, including in BR days.
Go back even further and there was even a principal service running from Edinburgh to London St Pancras via the West Coast! Well... until the blinkered idiots shut the Waverley route in 1969 there was....
You're right that some of my fellow nationalists haven't fully understood the full details of the announcement - but what is true is this: GARL has been a major feature of the Labour campaign, yet if it went ahead it would really be a major subsidy to the polluting airline industry. We should be investing in long-distance rail, not domestic flights. And this announcement does affect key inter-city routes and is therefore extremely regressive. It will have a far worse effect than not building an extra mile of track to a private airport.
I'll bow to your superior knowledge of the pre-privatisation railway!
As for GARL, I don't agree that it's a subsidy to the airline industry. GARL was designed to reduce the number of people who reached the airport by car, or conversely landed in Scotland and immediately travelled around the Central Belt by car.
It wasn't designed to increase the number of people who used the airport - only increasing the number of flights could do that, and that's a whole other issue which I remain deeply opposed to.
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