The Friends of the Far North Line
Cairdean Na Loine Tuath
the campaign group for rail north of
Inverness - lobbying for improved services for the local user, tourist and freight
operator
Freight
Although "Scotland's Railway" is the new name for the ScotRail-Network Rail Alliance it's impossible not to wonder if the Scottish Government is thinking only of ScotRail - the passenger railway - when it considers Scotland's Railway. It seems blind to the pressing needs of the potential freight market.
To achieve Net Zero targets requires getting much more freight carried by rail and reducing the numbers of huge lorries on the roads, especially the main arteries such as the A9. There seems to be a disconnect here between stated Scottish and UK government policy on modal shift and the UK Government's acceptance of ever larger and more dangerous lorries which are often observed breaking the speed limits.
Can private sector rail haulage companies be persuaded and/or incentivised to expand their businesses to convey a much greater tonnage of all kinds of freight? This could remove many of the HGV journeys from the A9, A96 and A95, and would improve safety as well as benefiting the environment - matching the world imperatives discussed once again at COP 28.
A good tranche of this traffic is for the whisky and timber industries from raw materials in, to finished products heading to the markets further south. Additionally, a new flow is going out to contract in 2024. This is the waste from Inverness's new consolidation plant which is to go to the rail-connected facility at Dunbar for further processing. Surely the railway must win this contract.
The Tesco train from Mossend to Inverness has been a success and has been picking up other traffic too, such as the liquefied natural gas for Thurso and Wick storage which is currently transferred to road at Inverness, and finished Sterling Board timber products from West Fraser (near Inverness Airport) which go south in the grocery containers.
With the new siding connection now enabled for West Fraser at Dalcross, an eventual flow of two trains per day is envisaged. This and the anticipated waste traffic flow means that further capacity planning on the Highland Main Line is essential.
Network Rail is currently said to be investigating extending some of the HML passing loops. Partly this has been brought about by the need to extend the Tesco train to 24 wagons.
Some of the loops are too short for the train, as can be seen at Pitlochry. The afternoon southbound Tesco trains were often stopped at the end of the double track at Blair Atholl because even at 20 vehicles they were too long to use the Pitlochry loop. It is a matter of great regret that the long Ballinluig loop was taken out of service in 1985, leaving us with a 13 mile single section from Pitlochry to Dunkeld, which for the Tesco train means almost 20 miles after crossing at Blair Atholl.
The A9 north of Dornoch, and particularly from Berriedale North northwards to Latheron and on to Wick on the A99 is not really suitable for HGVs which affect all the other traffic which has to share this road with them. Making more use again of the existing Georgemas Junction rail freight terminal would make sense. The designation of the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport should give a big opportunity for the railway to handle construction materials and eventually product and raw materials. This will require enhancement at the southern end of the line as far as Invergordon or maybe Nigg station. Restoration of the passing loop provision at the Evanton (Novar) Intermediate Block signal six miles north of Dingwall might be required.
This route is possibly the biggest contender for expansion of freight amongst all three of the lines which serve the Highlands and Islands node at Inverness. In view of this, and future enhancement works on the Dundee to Aberdeen and (can't come too soon) Perth to Inverness sections which will cause service disruption, it would make logistical sense to strengthen A2I now, to enable it to serve as the diversionary route for Inverness or Aberdeen when their main line is blocked.
Freight contracts are valuable and require/demand daily reliability. The freight must get through by rail if at all possible. We saw when the two long blockages of many weeks occurred in the Carmont area, that in order to get freight through to Aberdeen some passenger trains between Inverness and Elgin had to be cancelled.
It is Elgin and Keith which present the greatest opportunities for rail freight providing transport for raw materials and finished product for the whisky and timber industries. As well as being a major plank in the net zero campaign, transfer of HGV lorry traffic from the A9, A95 and A96 roads to rail will provide a big safety boost by reducing heavy traffic on the three roads, particularly on the A95 from Aviemore to Keith which is too narrow and known for the clashing of HGV wing mirrors.
At the West Fraser (formerly Norbord) site near Inverness Airport Station a connection and signalling for a future siding has now been put in and it only remains for the new operator to build a siding to replace the one Norbord built over to accommodate the first expansion of several extensions to the plant.
Passenger Services
The HML so badly needs greater flexibility with either more loops or double track to allow the running of not only more freight but more passenger trains too. An hourly frequency of the latter was promised but there are still big two hour gaps southbound from Inverness after the 10:50 and 12:48 and 90 minute gaps after 15:44 and 17:26.
From the December 2023 timetable, the 06:38 Inverness to Edinburgh business train as well as starting six minutes earlier now has 28 minutes of pathing allowances of various sorts between Inverness and Edinburgh Waverley, arriving there at 10:15! The journey used to take 30 minutes less, leaving at 06:50 and arriving at 09:58.
The first northbound service from Edinburgh/Glasgow does not reach Inverness until 10:29, and is followed by arrivals at 12:01 and 13:25. After the 15:29 it is every 90 minutes again until 18:26, after which there is a three hour gap before the 21:24 which is filled by the LNER service from Kings Cross. Finally there are two late arrivals at 22:43 and 23:17.
The Far North Line is also severely compromised by lack of capacity for both freight and passenger trains due to an inadequate number of passing loops. The highly regrettable 'temporary' slow down of 25 minutes to passenger train journey times between Inverness and Wick, in force since 2005, was due to the installation of a GB-wide safety system known as TPWS - Train Protection and Warning System. Safety is all important, but might more have been done to adapt TPWS to our single track lines?
The timetables have been further extended by a minute here and a minute there over the years. For example, the 12:34 from Wick to Inverness now arrives at 17:08, 6 minutes later than in 2019. An overall 4 hours 34 minutes. In 2012 that train took 4 hours 12 minutes and the connection at Inverness enabled arrival in Glasgow 30 minutes sooner. In 2000 the same train was timetabled at 3 hours 48 minutes. That means that 46 minutes has been added to the journey time in the last 24 years, reducing the already slow average speed of 46 mph to a shocking 38.3 mph.
In his review of the newly implemented December 2023/24 passenger timetable in RAIL magazine 998, Barry Doe is justifiably critical, "Overall service-pattern is a far cry from the original proposals for an hourly regular interval service between Inverness and Aberdeen despite the track improvements in recent years." First Class provision, he says, is "quite unbalanced and quite useless".
The proposals he refers to were made by the First Minister in 2008 along with ones for the Highland Main Line and the parallel A96 and A9 roads. Aspirations for the railway were for completion by 2016 but it and the A96 road targets were subsequently revised to 2030. A good start was made with the Aberdeen to Inverurie redoubling and Forres station enhancement completed in 2019. The recent construction of a passing loop at Inverness Airport Station is another step forward, but there is no sign yet of the construction of a vital loop near Orton to break up the long 18 mile single track bottleneck between Elgin and Keith.
We hope the Scottish Government is seriously ambitious about achieving significant modal shift to rail for environmental net zero reasons. The pressing need in the Highlands is for more double tracking to include reinstating quite a few of the passing loops removed by British Rail, lengthening others and maybe adding a few new ones. An effective signalling system is also required to suit the needs of the substantially increased and challenging mix of passenger and freight trains over this combination of double and still some single line sections.
As Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC)'s Sustaining Growth, Supporting Business campaign press release said in 2016: "Scotland's northern cities need to be better connected and single track sections of the railways linking Inverness, Aberdeen and the Central Belt are unacceptable in the 21st century."
We urgently need the capacity and the ambition!