ScotRail

[507022]

RE: ScotRail

(18/04/2013 10:31)wirralbus Wrote:  The first major building work for the new Borders Rail route started today .

The work that started today and has been eagerly awaited for quite a long time in the area is digging taking place in the Monktonhall area and the excavation of the Shawfair Station site .

Prior to this start of work there had been about six months of remediation work athe old Monktonhall Colliery site to make the land safe .

Network Rail has appointed BAM Nutall as main contractor for the work which for the work , the contract is worth £220m .

There will be stations at Shawfair (started today) , Eskbank , Newtongrange , Gorebridge , Stow , Galashiels and Tweedbank.

Hopefully in the future the line could continue on through the borders to Carlisle and rekindle an old route to Edinburgh avoiding the route from Carlisle via Carstairs in Lanarkshire .

It would be fantastic if the old Waverley route to Carlisle was resurrected, but given the gradients, curves and slowness of the route, it would probably never be commercially viable given the speed of the electrified WCML.
In addition, south of Hawick, there are no towns of any great size to generate intermediate traffic along the route to Carlisle.