LongTimeLurker

If there is one thing we have learned over the last ten months it is to not underestimate the level of mass hysteria over this and the way politicians are responding to that rather than being driven by rationality.

If it stops high risk people from developing severe symptoms, job done. There was no expectation that the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines were going to provide sterilising immunity that would completely prevent people from ever becoming infected with COVID.

Think this will be the new JFK assassination in the years ahead:

Definite signs that the UK establishment is now gently ushering NI towards the exit after the DUPes campaigned for something that was very much not in Ulster Unionism's long term interest: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-55783805 Would a BBC Scotland website story highlight a pro-Referendum angle if the poll numbers were breaking 47:42 in the No side's favour, given the BBC's state broadcaster role? Enda has been placed there for a reason.

The old alignment from close to Haymarket to Granton was in the original tram plans and will probably get used for that eventually after the Newhaven extension is completed. The South Sub and most of the Leith lines were always primarily about freight rather than passengers unlike the Cathcart circle in Glasgow that was mainly aimed at suburban passenger traffic. In Edinburgh, buses actually did make more sense in the Beeching era, but with the benefit of hindsight 50+ years on it would have been better for us in the present day if they had kept and modernised the tram network like many continental European cities did.

People tend to forget that Edinburgh also had a tram network in that era:

Problems are that the old alignment has also been built over with some housing before you even get close enough into the town centre for a well used west station and a lot of people (for the sake of argument lets call them the Green Party) are going to argue that the Longannet line makes more sense for implementing Alloa/Stirling traffic from the existing main town station because Edinburgh can also be involved that way albeit with a double back. Edinburgh is where people from the Alloa area are more likely to want to go, with no offence intended to the west end of Dunfermline. The main problem with anything ever happening on Dunfermline to Alloa and the reason that the Green Party are not being listended to is that the Longannet line and any double back are so cumbersome that you might as well just service Alloa via Stirling to Waverley. It was always mainly meant as a slow goods line while the line via Oakley was the double track main line designed with rapid passenger services in mind. The 500 lb gorilla in the room is also that Fife Circle-> Dalmeny -> Falkirk -> Queen Street is the more direct way to do any Glasgow train service (think there actually is one direct train per day from Kirkcaldy). Any route via Stirling is going to struggle to compete with express buses running over the Kincardine bridge for convenience. There was a Leith Central station (where the trainspotting one liner from Begbie's father happens) that could definitely have been used that way if more services from Glasgow and the west ran through rather than terminating at Waverley. It got closed because buses worked much better for most local traffic and there maybe wasn't as much scope for long distance travel from there as there would be now.

Most of that old line would be very easy as you describe but the biggest and in all likelihood most insurmountable problem is around where the old Dunfermline Upper station used to be: There are other issues in Dunfermline related to new housing that would also escalate the price tag and create a lot of fierce local opposition. Some local councils have protected old railway alignments in planning terms to help make future reinstements like Bathgate to Airdrie and Dalkeith to Gala financially viable. Fife didn't with this line and it's really unfortunate because it was still being used to move coal well into the 80s and probably would have been quickly reopened after the Alloa to Glasgow service did so well so we are looking at not much more than a 15 year window where a lack of foresight in planning terms damaged the future connectivity of the passenger rail network.

If I post about it often enough we will see if Baillieston will return and discover the next Crawford Baptie. Harthill and possibly Armadale are what is being rumoured about that in the EoS subforum thread on this subject. Fauldhouse still in the junior camp apparently. Edit: Burnieman subsequently disputed the info about Fauldhouse.

Is that something you know for a fact having spoken to people at these clubs or are you presenting your personal opinion of what should happen as a self-evident fait accompli? Given how lopsided the single table Tayside format is there are obvious reasons why individual clubs from there might want to explore other options at this point as Luncarty did last season and may not accept that a truncated single table Tayside sort of setup is their medium to long term future. Whether they would/should actually get accepted into the EoS and whether the Club 42 boundary makes sense or not are separate issues from what individual clubs may decide to try to do between now and March 31st. patriot1 has told us repeatedly that there is nothing stopping Tayside clubs putting in an application.

That would be lunatic if clubs like Whitburn and Pumpherston leave and not very clever even if they don't. There's a part of Lanarkshire that juts into West Lothian between Blackridge and Harthill, so Armadale is closer to Lanarkshire than many people probably realise, although it's not like the Harthill scenario where Harthill is actually in Lanarkshire but Harthill Royal's ground is just over the boundary in West Lothian: For GordonS's benefit, use of this map does not mean I accept that Bo'ness United should no longer be viewed as a West Lothian club.

Fauldhouse teams played in Lanarkshire junior leagues back in the day, so it wouldn't be unprecedented. Forth have never seemed to be flavour of the month in west circles for travel related reasons though, so may not be a given that a majority of WoS clubs would go along with this. Don't think there are any rigid rules on this, which is why nobody bats an eyelid over Kello Rovers being in South of Scotland territory, for example. Think West Lothian clubs need to think very carefully about what happens if they miss the EoS deadline and then get knocked back by the WoS. Could mean lots of trips to Tayside next season.

There has been at least one interview involving an officeholder from Armadale that made it sound like there was severe personal animosities over what happened in the season leading up to when the three tier 6 EoS conferences were set up, because several clubs left despite assuring others like Armadale in meetings that they wouldn't.

The two major problems with extending to Strathaven are that a very expensive viaduct between Stonehouse and Larkhall is no longer there and that a sizable portion of the old alignment has been used for a bypass road for Stonehouse. It was looked at closely when the Larkhall line was being done and afterwards but the cost was prohibitive for a town of Strathaven's size. Think some of the Glasgow suburban services like the Cathcart Circle could be switched to light rail or tram-train type formats then the East Kilbride branch could be more easily extended out from the old village, which isn't the greatest location from an EK new town standpoint. There has been some talk of that happening but don't think it's ever moved beyond the aspirational proposal sort of stage. The problem with a lot of Scotland's existing rail network and the old alignments that were closed in the Beeching era is that they often tend to go where goods traffic (especially coal) was being routed 150 years ago rather than where passengers would actually most want to go in the here and now. The Edinburgh trams approach of replacing the most congested city bus routes with tram lines following new alignments will often be much more sensible than trying to use old or existing rail alignments like the South Suburban line or various old alignments into Leith that were mainly intended for freight with any passenger traffic viewed as an added bonus to what was really paying the bills. Activists latch onto goods lines like Alloa to Rosyth and Edinburgh via Longannet and try to make it sound like it will work well for passengers in the present day without considering issues like either having to build a new chord that completely avoids Dunfermline where most of the potential passengers would be or the ongoing hassle that would be involved with having to do a double back in Dunfermline instead for each and every train using the route at a station that is already well serviced anyway. The old line from Alloa via Oakley would have made sense as new stations could have been opened to cater to the parts of Dunfermline that are most distant from the Fife Circle line but too much of it has been built on over the last 30 years, unfortunately.

...because Scotland has a culture of binge drinking to excess.

The problem is that the station location for Penicuik on that old alignment would be less than ideal and unlikely to attract passengers from most of the town. It was more the old Bilston Glen colliery line via Loanhead that was being proposed for a Dalkeith rail link but it's usually a tram line via Straiton that gets discussed now as it is easier to get light rail into where the would be passengers are. Extending the old Waverley line all the way to Carlisle gets talked about a lot but makes very little sense in big picture terms as it was only there as a main line because of competition between private rail companies in the Victorian era. There is no obvious need to duplicate the route via Carstairs in main line terms and there is unlikely to be any significant local traffic beyond Hawick. Gala to Hawick might work well but the price tag puts it a long way down any list of priorities. If it was going to happen, the time to do it was when the Borders railway was being reopened but it was difficult enough politically to persuade people that it should go beyond Gorebridge in Midlothian at the time.

Definitely depends on a vote by the members as all they agreed to was that tier 7 conferences would no longer be used after this season.

Only one way to find out and that's to put in an application. They took one last year that was over the boundary.

It's a wee bit more than that. Part of the reason it never gets anywhere with the goods line option that is already there is that it would do that connection very badly. It's more a way that people on north-south commuter services could interchange more easily with east-west ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail_Glasgow

A St Andrews to Dundee commuter route is definitely the only reason that's ever getting built, and odds on it would have been done by now if there was a strong case for it. Same comment applies to all the other projects that tend to get mentioned like Grangemouth, Ellon and the South Suburban line in Edinburgh. Glasgow Crossrail is the project that probably should still get done but there's maybe too much of a Labour vs SNP vibe going on over that for the old St Enoch line to ever be used again that way in the short to medium term in the absence of a shock election result in May. The other option is waiting to do it properly with a tunnel some time down the road, which will no doubt have to happen eventually if/when Central and Queen's Street hit maximum capacity on services.

Yes, but Mitch McConnell seems to have blocked more controversial ones than that by threatening him with what would happen over his impeachment trial according to Tucker Carlson anyway.

No pardons for Joe Exotic and Julian Assange so far. Dropping a last minute bombshell on that might do it.

There was never an adjustment in the generally perceived threat level from what was being reported back in March when the IFR was believed to be 2% to what actually happened with an IFR of around 0.2% that was very heavily age skewed towards those with multiple comorbidities. I've pretty much given up on trying to reason with people at this point over why life does need to still go on reasonably normally to prevent serious problems from developing elsewhere. Vaccines should finally be the way out and it will only be a few weeks until they should be putting a massive dent in the death and ICU numbers once all the over 70s have been done.