TENS of thousands of rail passengers endured travel chaos over the Bank Holiday weekend after an electrical fault caused hundreds of trains to be cancelled or delayed across the west of Scotland.
The latest disruption comes as new figures show ScotRail has been hit with record fines for failing to meet required standards for running the country’s trains and stations.
And follows a report which suggests Glasgow Queen Street is Britain’s most unpopular railway station, according to new figures.
ScotRail bosses said services from Glasgow Central Station were massively disrupted after trains were cancelled on Saturday evening.
Ten trains travelling on high level routes lost power at around 9.15pm on Saturday, with passengers having to be helped off and led to safety by ScotRail staff.
READ MORE: Glasgow Central electricity supply failure sees massive disruption
The operator said there had been severe damage to overhead wires just outside Glasgow Central and cancelled services from the station from 10.45pm.
Services on all routes in and out of Glasgow Central High Level were then disrupted for much of yesterday, causing a knock-on affect for those looking to enjoy a trip over the Bank Holiday weekend.
Routes affected included those running to Paisley Canal, Ardrossan Harbour, Wemyss Bay, Ayr, Kilmarnock and Gourock.
Trains running to Largs, the Cathcart Circle, East Kilbride, Neilston, Newton, and Lanark were also disrupted.
Lines were reopened at around 1pm yesterday, however, a number were wound down early and cancelled from around 5pm to allow for essential repair work to be carried out.
A ScotRail Alliance spokesman apologised to those affected by the disruption and said engineers were working as quickly as possible to reopen the line.
READ MORE: One of Scotland’s busiest train stations named as Britain’s most unpopular
The operator said it hoped to have the lines reopened again this morning with a full service in operation.
The latest problems come as new figures reveal Scotland’s national rail firm received record fines of nearly £4.6 million in the last financial year for failing to meet required standards.
ScotRail clocked up a record £1.6m in financial penalties over the last three months alone over its failings, nearly £400,000 more than in the previous three months.
The firm, which posted a £3.5m after-tax loss for 2016, failed to reach the required standard in 21 out of 34 areas in the last three months of the financial year.
Although this marks an improvement on 26 failures during the previous quarter, the latest report card shows key targets were not met in areas including litter and contamination, train seats, train racks, refreshments, food, help points, telephones, ticket machines, train and station toilets, cleanliness, taxi ranks and car parks, machines, train and station toilets, cleanliness, taxi ranks and car parks.
Some of the biggest quarterly dips in performance came in station CCTV and security, which is at the centre of a union dispute, dropping from an average performance of 86.33% to 77.8%.
Unions have confirmed rail workers still plan to go on strike on May 19 – the day of the Scottish Cup Final – in a dispute over the dwindling number of CCTV operators which unions say are putting passengers on Scotland’s railways at risk.
Dr John McCormick, chairman of the Scottish Association for Public Transport, called for urgent improvements to the train operator’s performance, saying that it “seems that ScotRail has been in the doldrums for some time”.
The latest financial penalties come as the ScotRail Alliance – the partnership between the train operator Abellio ScotRail and Network Rail Scotland – revealed a performance improvement plan last month to drive up standards.
A ScotRail spokesman said the penalties were not fines, but “a reinvestment fund that drives standards even higher, and every penny raised through the fund gets put back into enhancing Scotland’s railway. We have developed detailed plans to keep improving the high level of service our customers quite rightly expect.”
Only 58% of passengers say they are “satisfied” with the city’s terminal, according to Transport Focus data. The survey was conducted between September and November last year, shortly after a £100 million modernisation project began at Glasgow Queen Street.
The second worst score was given for the station serving Gatwick Airport (66%), followed by Oxford (67%) and Clapham Junction (69%).
Also among the bottom 10 were London Victoria (72%), Hull (73%) and Cardiff Central (75%).
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel