Scottish Infrastructure

[ICTChris]

We definitely suffered from Beeching. It wouldn't have mattered that the A7 is a crap road if I could have got a train to Galashiels or Hawick all those years. Similarly Edinburgh once had a pretty decent city rail network but that was all ripped up. Glasgow managed to keep theirs and so if you're from Glasgow you can get a train to, say, Barrhead while in Edinburgh you can't get a train to,say, Penicuik.

 

I’m pretty sure there is a working rail line around Edinburgh it’s just not used for passengers.

 

Edited to add - this one https://www.citymetric.com/transport/here-s-case-reopening-edinburgh-s-lost-circle-line-4377

[jamamafegan]

 
I’m pretty sure there is a working rail line around Edinburgh it’s just not used for passengers.
 
Edited to add - this one https://www.citymetric.com/transport/here-s-case-reopening-edinburgh-s-lost-circle-line-4377

That’s incredible, never knew about that line. Get it opened.

[peasy23]

 

I’m pretty sure there is a working rail line around Edinburgh it’s just not used for passengers.

 

Edited to add - this one https://www.citymetric.com/transport/here-s-case-reopening-edinburgh-s-lost-circle-line-4377

Glasgow has a cross city link which runs from just to the east of high street and joins the lines coming from central just at Shields Road. Afaik it's only used for units heading to and from the depots at Shields and Corkerhill, but in theory could be used to run a direct service from somewhere like Gourock to Edinburgh.

 

[Highland Capital]

32 minutes ago, jamamafegan said:

 

That’s incredible, never knew about that line. Get it opened.

 

Morningside station is mostly still intact.  The platform is still there and just needs a renovation and removing the overgrown weeds and bushes.  Madness that a city of half a million people, with railways all over it has so few stations and so little commuter railways.  There was some plans for the trams to also take the circle line with most of the stations reopening but it was rejected.

1 hour ago, Jacksgranda said:

The Aberdeenshire lines all went, and mostly ripped up. I think we were lucky to hold onto the Inverness line.

The head of Scotrail has said he wants to rebuild the line to Peterhead.  Surprising it was taken away in the first place to be honest.

Also, apparently some people up here are calling for Tomatin railway station to re-open.  It's also mostly intact from what I can see but would there be that much demand from outside the village?

Edited September 13, 2020 by Highland Capital

[Jacksgranda]

32 minutes ago, Scorge said:

And five years later, the North Sea strikes oil and virtually all of those lines would be handy and comfortably pay their way. Total lack of foresight. Even with the AWPR, the A93 is a horror just now, and the line to Ballater would be catnip for tourists, and ideal from Banchory eastbound for commuters. If we'd been independent 40 years ago and done a Norway it makes you sick what we could have done on the infrastructure front....

No doubt about that. I often wondered why the lines weren't maintained instead of lifted, maybe it would have cost nearly as much as keeping them open?

[Gaz]

3 hours ago, MixuFruit said:

Really we should bulldoze Harthill

I'm in!

[101]

1 hour ago, Jim McLean's Ghost said:

The idea that there is good infrastructure elsewhere in the UK is also a complete myth

The bright yellow lines are real motorways. Miles behind Holland and Belgium. Germany has an extensive motorway network linking every major cities. Meanwhile in Britain you can't go from Scotland to Yorkshire without taking a shitty A road. West England, fuckall. Wales and the south west? enjoy your 1 good road.

Even the network around London is shite with everyone desperate to ditch their unbearably long commutes because of Covid.

 

You do know why/when this was built right? If not then I have some news and you might want to sit down first.

[Hauzen]

5 hours ago, Academically Deficient said:

 

How about a Glasgow Subway extension once we've sorted the more obvious road issues outwith the Central Belt?

 

There were a few proposed subway extension plans in the run up to the Commonwealth Games in 2014 that looked pretty decent, they involved incorporating the subway into lines like the Cathcart Circle and branching out through Parkhead, the East End and also up through Maryhill. 

It wouldn't require too much work to connect some of the existing lines up to the subway circle, the problem would be the subway runs on a smaller gauge to the main lines and that would be a ballache to overcome. What would be the cost of shutting the entire circle for X number of years to widen the tunnels for regular gauge trains to run through them and onto the surface lines? Astronomical, no doubt.

[Shandon Par]

6 minutes ago, 101 said:

You do know why/when this was built right? If not then I have some news and you might want to sit down first.

In that vein, we maybe suffer from being so early to industrialise. We’re stuck with knackered old narrow roads, Victorian era railways etc whereas more “modern” countries have been able to build more modern infrastructure from the start. 

[Silvio Tattiescone]

7 minutes ago, Shandön Par said:

In that vein, we maybe suffer from being so early to industrialise. We’re stuck with knackered old narrow roads, Victorian era railways etc whereas more “modern” countries have been able to build more modern infrastructure from the start. 

The curse of the early adopters.

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

8 minutes ago, 101 said:

You do know why/when this was built right? If not then I have some news and you might want to sit down first.

The vast, vast majority of the Autobahn was built after 1970.

 

[ICTChris]

That’s incredible, never knew about that line. Get it opened.

It also goes through areas where of Edinburgh with lots of commuters, high population density, students and people without cars -Southside, Gorgie, Leith.

[101]

23 minutes ago, Shandön Par said:

In that vein, we maybe suffer from being so early to industrialise. We’re stuck with knackered old narrow roads, Victorian era railways etc whereas more “modern” countries have been able to build more modern infrastructure from the start. 

Maybe that was D.A.F.Cs point earlier we should let High Valleyfield industrialise and let them have a dual carriageway?

The Chinese are building some amount of roads in Africa, maybe we could do a deal with them once we are independent 

16 minutes ago, Jim McLean's Ghost said:

The vast, vast majority of the Autobahn was built after 1970.

Kind of ruins the joke of us electing a dictator to get good roads if we then have to wait for the dictator to start ethnic cleansing, piss off the world and then shoot himself in a bunker and hope 20 odd years after his demise that our road network is in a better shape.

[Academically Deficient]

28 minutes ago, Hauzen said:

There were a few proposed subway extension plans in the run up to the Commonwealth Games in 2014 that looked pretty decent, they involved incorporating the subway into lines like the Cathcart Circle and branching out through Parkhead, the East End and also up through Maryhill. 

It wouldn't require too much work to connect some of the existing lines up to the subway circle, the problem would be the subway runs on a smaller gauge to the main lines and that would be a ballache to overcome. What would be the cost of shutting the entire circle for X number of years to widen the tunnels for regular gauge trains to run through them and onto the surface lines? Astronomical, no doubt.

Not possible I'm afraid. 

Any extension would need to be in a standard gauge, So, for example, the figure of 8 to the east end would effectively be a different railway, with different trains, different depot etc.

[Academically Deficient]

1 hour ago, peasy23 said:

Glasgow has a cross city link which runs from just to the east of high street and joins the lines coming from central just at Shields Road. Afaik it's only used for units heading to and from the depots at Shields and Corkerhill, but in theory could be used to run a direct service from somewhere like Gourock to Edinburgh.

 

I think this is the scheme I referred to earlier, with a new station in the Gorbals, interchange with Subway at West St and major city centre station at Glasgow Cross.

It was worked up in detail about 15 years ago, but it's never progressed. Technically it's pretty do-able, but that's not the issue.

[D.A.F.C]

Kind of ruins the joke of us electing a dictator to get good roads if we then have to wait for the dictator to start ethnic cleansing, piss off the world and then shoot himself in a bunker and hope 20 odd years after his demise that our road network is in a better shape.

Nooo don't connect Valleyfield to civilisation. They need to be left alone, like the violent angry tribes of the amazon.
Seriously though maybe I was a bit harsh but we could do better. I wish we had amazing cheap public transport but it isn't third world.

[Hedgecutter]

1 hour ago, Shandön Par said:

In that vein, we maybe suffer from being so early to industrialise. We’re stuck with knackered old narrow roads, Victorian era railways etc whereas more “modern” countries have been able to build more modern infrastructure from the start. 

Dornoch Bridge aside, if the Victorians didn't build a  given train route then it's because it was and always will be an impossible feat.  Fact. 

[resk]

There's a train link to Aberdeen airport

There's Dyce train station on the Aberdeen-Inverness line, where you can alight and get a nice view of the runway while you figure out whether you should walk for 50 minutes round to the actual terminal or get an overpriced taxi to take you round.... it's not really an airport train link that the rest of the world would recognise, in which you get off the train and you're basically at the terminal.

[Academically Deficient]

23 minutes ago, Hedgecutter said:

Dornoch Bridge aside, if the Victorians didn't build a  given train route then it's because it was and always will be an impossible feat.  Fact. 

Agreed. Witness the twin underground sections under the Clyde built in the 1890s. Driest parts of the Subway. The only water in there flows from St. Enoch. Cos they are made out of cast iron. Amazing. 

They didn't even have calculators, never mind computers.

[D.A.F.C]

Here where is the Kircaldy to Portobello hovercraft?

Methil stole it and sold it to cash convertors.