WHEN your area has an unemployment rate of 17%, and 60% of its people have no car, the last news you want to hear is that your rail service to the nearest major city may be axed. Which is why, in April 1984, 400 residents of Patterton and Neilston, in Renfrewshire, crowded onto a train to Glasgow Central, from where, led by three pipers, they marched to the HQ of Strathclyde Regional Council. The authority had threatened to close rail services between Glasgow and the communities as part of a package to cut rate-borne subsidies and extend rail electrification to East Kilbride and Cumbernauld. A delegation told the council’s highways and transportation chairman, Malcolm Waugh, of the social and economic hardships that would face the 5,000-strong community if the closure went ahead. They argued that the consequences ought to have been taken into account before the package was agreed, pointed out that buses were no real alternative to the train, and said that 300 pupils would have to be bussed daily to and from Eastwood Secondary School if the service came to an end. Mr Waugh said he would meet them in two months’ time once they had given him their report on proposed alternatives to closure. He also said that if the council ended the subsidy for the Neilston/Patterton service, it would be up to the Secretary of State for Transport to decide whether or not to actually axe it.