USING the yardstick “as the crow flies” to assess average speeds of particular ScotRail train services Britain (“Scots trains slower than in south east, The Herald, August 28) is not exactly an enlightened method. Railway routes wherever do not run in straight lines as corvids are presumed to do. Any speeding up can only be progressed, marginally in some cases, by track geometry improvements allied to enhanced signalling. Trains themselves are now, in the main, faster at acceleration and maintaining overall speeds.
The forthcoming electrification of the Edinburgh Waverley-Glasgow Queen Street route will no doubt bring forth the cry that the new electric trains will take around the same journey time as the first diesel services 60 years ago. That is basically true, but remember most of them only called at Haymarket en route. The increase over the years in commuter traffic warrants the present day services calling at Croy, Falkirk High, Polmont and Linlithgow with a more frequent spread than anything hitherto but still doing the end to end journey within 40/45 minutes.
Speed is not the ultimate in one’s journeys. After all, it is better to arrive hopefully than not at all.
John Macnab,
175 Grahamsdyke Street, Laurieston, Falkirk.
YOUR story reporting the Press Association’s research on railway journeys across Britain (“Edinburgh to Perth train hits average speed of only 25mph, The Herald, August 28) asserts that the 13.34 train from Edinburgh to Perth shows an average speed of ”only 25mph“, and the 9.28 to Dundee only 34mph.
The shortest route between Edinburgh and Perth is 57 miles, giving an average speed of 45mph for the journey of one hour 16 minutes, and to Dundee is 59 miles, thus averaging 54mph for the one hour five minutes taken.
The distances involved, along with the train times, are freely available in the Network Rail timetables which can be downloaded from their website.
Sean Feeny,
507 Shields Road, Glasgow.
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