EXTRA carriages will be added to the vast majority of Borders Railway services this weekend after complaints of that some passengers had been left to stand for the hour-long journey between Edinburgh and Tweedbank.
ScotRail confirmed that 85 per cent of services on Saturday and 89 per cent on Sunday would operate with at least one additional carriage, and in many cases two additional carriages, to tackle overcrowding.
The operator had faced criticism from commuters and campaigners that it was running the popular new service with only two-carriage trains, leaving passengers, including children, standing in the aisles and others left behind on platforms along the route because the trains were already too busy.
A spokeswoman for ScotRail said they were using all available rolling stock to beef up capacity over the weekend.
She said: "We will continue to carefully monitor the number of passengers getting on and off at each station to achieve the best possible balance of demand versus availability of rolling stock. "Further changes may be required next week."
ScotRail previously blamed the "novelty factor" of the new railway for the high demand, with the weekend services particularly busy with families taking day trips.
Special steam train services, which are running three times a week until October, have also sold out.
The new Borders Railway opened to the public on September 6, 46 years and eight months since its predecessor, the Waverley Route, was axed as part of the Beeching cuts.
Rail consultant, David Spaven, author of 'Waverley Route: the battle for the Borders Railway' said the "shoddy experience" meant some new travellers would not use the railway again.
“The level of interest in travelling on the railway wasn’t at all ‘remarkable’ – it was highly predictable, and ScotRail were warned by campaigners, but chose to ignore well-informed advice," said Mr Spaven.
"Professional railway managers should not be deploying two-coach trains at the busiest travel times, when four or six coach trains are needed. It was critical to get things right in the first few weeks of the railway, but the opportunity to build on all the goodwill towards the new railway has been partly squandered.”
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