On 30 November I spent a very interesting morning visiting ScotRail's Customer Service Centre which is located in Dunfermline City Station.

My host was Steve Friend, the Centre Manager, who enthusiastically talked me through the work carried out in this, the smaller of two such Service Centres. The other is in Paisley Gilmour Street Station.

The two centres cover all the stations in Scotland between them. Paisley keeps an eye and ear on the western Central Belt area, which includes Scotland's biggest and busiest concentration of stations. Meanwhile the Dunfermline facility looks after everything else, which although mostly the east and north of Scotland also includes the West Highland Line and some of the smaller stations on the Glasgow & South Western route to Dumfries and Carlisle.

When you press a Help button on the Far North Line it is an operator in Dunfermline who will answer. If you walk into a station on the line you will be monitored by the CCTV in Dunfermline, and if you hear a special announcement, this is where it comes from.

There is evidently a marked difference between the kind of interactions the centre staff have with the public in the two centres; Paisley is often contacted with the kind of immediate train information requests you would expect, whereas Dunfermline, whilst also receiving plenty of those, is often asked for help by visitors and tourists looking for information beyond the latest train service advice.

The amount of relevant information quickly accessible by the staff at their desks is extremely valuable to someone who has become stuck, puzzled, or baffled, at a railway station. Perhaps the best way to imagine this is that it gives the traveller quick access to the kind of information they could get at home on the internet. The major difference being that a staff member in the centre knows exactly how to find local bus times, bus stop locations, taxi firms and even local visitor attractions in seconds - because that's what they're doing all day.

As a theoretical question, I asked Steve whether, if I were a tourist who had got off the train at Tain and were wishing to visit the Glenmorangie Distillery, there would be advice available at the Help Point about how to get there. He said that is exactly the kind of request they sometimes receive, and they would help. I wouldn't want to give the reader the impression at this point that the Help button is a kind of digital Tourist Information Office, but it would be fair to say that the staff do try to help everyone.

The centre in Dunfermline has nineteen staff and there are four desks manned at all times - even 3 a.m. on Christmas Morning! There is also an 'announcer's desk' which is manned continuously. The two Customer Service Centres can cover each other's stations if necessary and they also work with ScotRail Control in Springburn to resolve issues. Some members of staff have worked the help desks for many years, and accrued a lot of local knowledge.

Decisions are taken here about arranging substitute means of travel, such as a the acceptance of rail tickets on a parallel bus route, or the provision of a taxi in extreme circumstances. An extra service offered at some stations is the issuing of vouchers for refreshments in the case of a long delay. For example, at Inverness a missed connection can lengthen a journey a great deal, so the arrangement ScotRail has with the Costa Coffee outlet in the station will be most welcome on occasion.

The room in Dunfermline is dominated by the live feeds from CCTV cameras on multiple screens. A new feature of the 'always on' cameras, i.e. those attached to ethernet systems, is called 'Linger Detection'. The computer system uses algorithms (which are still being refined, based on everyday experience) to notice two particular kinds of behaviour - trespass, and possible suicide. In the event of either scenario, help can be quickly organised, with the assistance where necessary of the British Transport Police. The BTP, while not monitoring the CCTV itself, is able to access the camera output when necessary. In addition to the bank of screens there are two separate "Event Priority Window" monitors with four potential views each. These are only activated when the system spots something to be checked, and there is also an audible warning to ensure the potential emergency is not missed.

All the FNL stations have at least two CCTV cameras operating. Some are live and some are just recording. Of those, some cameras are not recording all the time, but are triggered by a person's presence. Steve showed me the view inside the small 'museum' room in Helmsdale Station where the camera will record only while someone is there. This keeps the amount of saved material at more remote stations to a minimum.

From the point of view of the Customer Service Centre the new 'request-to-stop' kiosks on some FNL stations have been a great success. They give reassurance to passengers that there is a robust system to ensure that trains actually will stop when needed.

Steve told me about an ongoing upgrade to the Help system which will be completed at the beginning of 2024. This involves the transfer of every Help Point to an ethernet connection where there is a power supply available near the point. Once completed there will be only five stations not connected this way - Dunrobin Castle, Culrain, Kildonan, Altnabreac and, rather surprisingly, Wick. These will be regularly resurveyed so that they too can be upgraded when the power supply becomes available. One of the particular benefits of the upgrade, apart from the extra reliability, will be the ability of the Centre staff to proactively contact the Help Point to reconnect with a passenger with whom they've already been speaking, or just to attract the attention of someone nearby.

As a regular passenger myself, it was especially reassuring to witness the dedication and enthusiasm of those whose job is to help us out when things don't go quite right, or when we're just puzzled. A common theme running through my visits to both Customer Service Centres, and ScotRail Control at Springburn, is the determination to make things as good as possible for us, the passengers.