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Trains in an independent Scotland?

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TT-ONR-NRN

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If Scotland became independent, how would trains be affected?

First of all, what would happen to Avanti West Coast, LNER, CrossCountry and TransPennine Express services? Because surely they would then be travelling internationally, in and out of the UK for services such as Euston-Glasgow, Kings Cross-Edinburgh, Manchester/South West - Scotland? Would they be severely reduced? Passport enforced?! Withdrawn altogether and England and Scotland’s railways cut off from each other?!

Second thing - ScotRail. I’m assuming they’ve have to resume using British trains because what else would they use, but still, what would happen? Removal of TOPS? Ordering completely new types of rolling stock in the future? Government operated?

I’m curious to know. :)
 
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Clansman

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Coming up with reasoning for what it would look like would result in the moderators whipping out the ban card or the keys to the thread if this discussion remained in a railway foccussed category on the forum. I reckon it'd be better served for all sides to the argument to have it moved to general discussion.

Purely in a railway context, all UK railway rules, regulations, designations etc would transfer only in name to something belonging purely to Scotland. I don't think this would in any way change the rolling stock used given contracts would only be void if they stipulated such occorunces as Scottish independence being a case for doing so. If leasing companies are suddenly faced with hundreds of carriages lying dormant, then they're not getting paid by anybody in the short to medium term to lease them. And given the size of the ScotRail fleet, that's a lot of storage space to be found for non Scottish based leasing companies.

Bare in mind that Scotland would not become independent in the immediate aftermath of a pro independence vote. This would take at least a year according to the Scottish and UK government's timetable for such an eventuality, if 2014 is anything to go by. This seems logical. So any changes to rail provision in Scotland wouldn't be drastic as such but would be months to years in the preperation.
 

Shaw S Hunter

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It all depends on the relationship between the two nations after independence. There may be some whose hostility to the other camp leads them to express a desire to "raise the drawbridge" but in reality I suspect pragmatism would prevail. Long before the Schengen Treaty and the Euro the frontiers between the Benelux nations were all but invisible. Scotland rejoining the EU would complicate things but then again despite BoJo's grandstanding it remains to be seen just how the current UK's relationship with the EU will develop.
 

Bletchleyite

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My main concern would be that an independent Scotland may, depending on how money (e.g. oil) is allocated, be quite a bit poorer than at present, and so we may see line closures as they are unaffordable, e.g. on the Far North.
 
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yorkie

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Just a gentle reminder, the question is relating to a specific scenario (regardless of whether or not it is likely or whether or not any particular person does or doesn't want it to happen)

If Scotland became independent,​

Then, given that scenario, the question is:

how would trains be affected?​
 

Failed Unit

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No chance. It was the Scottish Government the lobbied to keep LNER running north of Edinburgh. The recent proposal to change XC time tables was blocked by the Scottish government as ScotRail couldn’t cover the gaps.
 

Aictos

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Just a gentle reminder, the question is relating to a specific scenario (regardless of whether or not it is likely or whether or not any particular person does or doesn't want it to happen)

If Scotland became independent,​

Then, given that scenario, the question is:

how would trains be affected?​

Indeed which is why I’ve posted a new topic for debate as I feel we have been getting side tracked.

We can continue the debate on Scotland and it’s future here: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/scottish-independence.198325/

I hope that’s okay @yorkie ?
 

Meerkat

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No way would politically exposed things like the Far North Line get closed - that would be too big an admission of failure (with no evil Westminster to blame!).
The cuts would be shaving everything without lumpy visible cuts, and governments spending money they don’t have to get through the next election.
The big cuts would be held off until forced by the EU/IMF
 

Journeyman

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when Czechoslovakia split, there seemed to be a reduction in trains between Czech Republic and Slovakia

Interesting. Possibly because things previously concentrated entirely in Prague ended up splitting between there and Bratislava.
 

Horizon22

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Scotrail itself is quite self-contained - only run the service to Newcastle outside of its "borders" so I imagine operations there would change very little.

It would be interesting if therefore Schengen was required whether there would have to be checks at places like Carlisle or Newcastle which seems like an operational nightmare for cross-border services. Or CX, LNER might just terminate there. The CS might become start at Euston only with no intermediate stops before Scotland in that scenario. That's all worst-case scenario but worth considering. Are there any EU examples for comparison where a country has reduced integration with its neighbouring land-based neighbours in the last 30 years?

Edit: Regarding OP's second point, I'd suggest there wouldn't be much benefit in not replicating those systems and would be prohibitively expensive / time-consuming to not already use/duplicate existing rail back-office functions
 

duffield

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I would be gobsmacked if a solution involving friction-less passport-free travel (rail, road and air) wasn't found. There are a *lot* of 'Anglo-Scottish' individuals and families and any government that proposed dividing them in any significant way would be risking a lot of votes.
I'd be very surprised if independence made any visible difference to cross-border train travel.
 

Meerkat

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I would be gobsmacked if a solution involving friction-less passport-free travel (rail, road and air) wasn't found. There are a *lot* of 'Anglo-Scottish' individuals and families and any government that proposed dividing them in any significant way would be risking a lot of votes.
I'd be very surprised if independence made any visible difference to cross-border train travel.

May not be a choice if the SNP follow their plan to have a much slacker immigration policy than the UK. Ireland stay roughly in line to keep the CTA together.
 

Bletchleyite

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May not be a choice if the SNP follow their plan to have a much slacker immigration policy than the UK. Ireland stay roughly in line to keep the CTA together.

I don't think England wants a stricter policy with regard to tourism. It's about people living and working in the UK, which can still be controlled without closed borders. Therefore, passport control on rail journeys to Scotland is infinitessimally unlikely.
 

Meerkat

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I don't think England wants a stricter policy with regard to tourism. It's about people living and working in the UK, which can still be controlled without closed borders. Therefore, passport control on rail journeys to Scotland is infinitessimally unlikely.
The issue is if you have a CTA for Scottish passport holders as with Ireland. That would mean immigrants refused by the UK could go to Scotland, get a Scottish passport, then use that to live and work in the UK.
 

hexagon789

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Second thing - ScotRail. I’m assuming they’ve have to resume using British trains because what else would they use, but still, what would happen? Removal of TOPS? Ordering completely new types of rolling stock in the future? Government operated?

I would imagine it is in the ROSCOs' interests to continue leasing stock to ScotRail, as to nationalisation - I would say that's perhaps more likely.
 

Bevan Price

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One thing nobody seems to have mentioned: Scotland would control "the land" - but Network Rail - controlled by the (Whitehall) government would still own the entire Scottish railway infrastructure - stations, track, signalling, etc. A substantial sum of money would be needed if Scotland wanted to purchase - or nationalise railways within Scotland.
 

railjock

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One thing nobody seems to have mentioned: Scotland would control "the land" - but Network Rail - controlled by the (Whitehall) government would still own the entire Scottish railway infrastructure - stations, track, signalling, etc. A substantial sum of money would be needed if Scotland wanted to purchase - or nationalise railways within Scotland.
I think the handover of the railway infrastructure would be a fundamental part of the independence settlement.
 

Clansman

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Network Rail in Scotland would transfer over. After all, whoever owns it, funds it.
 

Meerkat

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One thing nobody seems to have mentioned: Scotland would control "the land" - but Network Rail - controlled by the (Whitehall) government would still own the entire Scottish railway infrastructure - stations, track, signalling, etc. A substantial sum of money would be needed if Scotland wanted to purchase - or nationalise railways within Scotland.
There are various precedents that government property splits according to where it is.
Otherwise it would be split like a divorce - and why would either side not want the Scots to have it?
 

Clansman

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I don't think England wants a stricter policy with regard to tourism. It's about people living and working in the UK, which can still be controlled without closed borders. Therefore, passport control on rail journeys to Scotland is infinitessimally unlikely.
Exactly. A common immigration strategy in Great Britain could solve that in a way that would still allow Scotland and England to have their own policies. A 'tiered' system of immigration perhaps.
 

Meerkat

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Exactly. A common immigration strategy in Great Britain could solve that in a way that would still allow Scotland and England to have their own policies. A 'tiered' system of immigration perhaps.

How would that work? The SNP want/need to bring lots of people in. Unless Scotland has tiers of Scottish passport that isn’t going to work with a CTA like the Irish have.
 

60019

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There are various precedents that government property splits according to where it is.
Otherwise it would be split like a divorce - and why would either side not want the Scots to have it?

Because the purely commercial track access charges could be pretty extortionate before the Scottish government could politically afford to either cut rail services or forcibly nationalise it for less than open market value (especially a newly independent government which is trying to prove it can have rapid membership of an institutionally liberal organisation on unusually generous terms). That's also assuming HMG aren't trying to punish Scotland or deliberately wreck the country so that they're forced back into union on whatever terms we offer, or to make an example for NI as the Catholic demographic there gradually creeps towards a majority, or just to make a pile of cash having a fire sale of Crown assets in Scotland to anyone willing to gamble on keeping them, in which case all bets are off.

As for the original question, I suspect they'd try to have as close to a fully-integrated national railway as they can sneak past the EU commission and the eager continental investors. There's a few loopholes they can explain for at least a year or so until someone closes them, as well as the classic "ignore the rule until it gets dragged through every possible appeal while wasting as much time as possible, then keep wasting time obeying the court orders" which previously served DB and others so well.

If that doesn't work, they can have the national government informally lean on local authorities to harmonise their local public transport regulators which councils theoretically operate independently (so long as they keep getting grants…), and just franchise out the Inter7Cities and services from England if anyone is enough of a mug to bid for them. Their internal decision making about grants and "suggestions" to local authorities can be based on more realistic assessments of the real cost of services, rather than pretending to believe the track access changes the way anti-rail French politicians do.

At the border, even if they're not allowed to remain in the CTA, old-style on-train passport checks would be possible if someone can ever figure out why UKBA refused to even give quotes for doing it on Channel Tunnel passenger services. They kept doing it even when ministers and governments changed, and even when people offered to pay for an estimate, but AFAIK they never gave a reason, not even an unbelievable one. For the ECML its easy with Berwick and Berwick North stations, assuming the border on the river. If Berwick is made entirely in Scotland the simplest solution is to make the border run into the station.

Network Rail in Scotland would transfer over. After all, whoever owns it, funds it.

Unless HMG wants to treat it as a commercial venture, along the lines of some lines in the rEU. ISTR there are some lines on the Interoperable rail network which are owned by foreign government companies, though all have EU member governments as majority owner (though the CTRL is majority leased by the Quebec government). After all, commercially operated track networks are part of the idea of the Railways Packages in the minds of the Swedish, UK treasury, and EU bureaucrats that successively dreamed up the rules.
 

snookertam

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Just noticed this - There are numerous cases where one country's operator crosses an international border into another across Europe, so there would be nothing unusual or unprecedented with the current cross border services continuing to run into Scotland. There may be changes to how they are funded potentially, as the independent Scottish government would be responsible for rail transport here in its entirity, not just the internal Scottish trains. In Scotland we already fund these things through the UK government. I really don't see it in anyone's interests to do anything other than continue the current level of services if people need them.

A good example would be the level of service currently operating between Copenhagen and the South of Sweden. A fair amount of that would be commuter traffic even. The fact that Sweden and Denmark are independent states doesn't hinder anything.
 

RT4038

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At the border, even if they're not allowed to remain in the CTA, old-style on-train passport checks would be possible if someone can ever figure out why UKBA refused to even give quotes for doing it on Channel Tunnel passenger services. They kept doing it even when ministers and governments changed, and even when people offered to pay for an estimate, but AFAIK they never gave a reason, not even an unbelievable one. For the ECML its easy with Berwick and Berwick North stations, assuming the border on the river. If Berwick is made entirely in Scotland the simplest solution is to make the border run into the station.

I am sorry, but the reason for UKBA not wanting on-train passport checks (and therefore not even quoting for it) is pretty well known - the UKBA do not want undocumented/incorrectly documented persons to set foot on UK soil, due to the difficulty/expense of deporting many such people ( asylum seekers/economic migrants etc) back to their home country (not the country they have just come from).
If an independent Scotland were in Schengen rather than the CTA, I would expect Anglo-Scottish trains to operate more like E* (with juxtapositioned controls) and probably a lot less through trains. (Probably have to change at Newcastle or Carlisle and pass through passport control, with a few non-stop through trains per day to major English destinations)
 

snookertam

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I am sorry, but the reason for UKBA not wanting on-train passport checks (and therefore not even quoting for it) is pretty well known - the UKBA do not want undocumented/incorrectly documented persons to set foot on UK soil, due to the difficulty/expense of deporting many such people ( asylum seekers/economic migrants etc) back to their home country (not the country they have just come from).
If an independent Scotland were in Schengen rather than the CTA, I would expect Anglo-Scottish trains to operate more like E* (with juxtapositioned controls) and probably a lot less through trains. (Probably have to change at Newcastle or Carlisle and pass through passport control, with a few non-stop through trains per day to major English destinations)

For these types of reasons I would doubt that an independent Scotland would be part of Schengen.
 

RT4038

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For these types of reasons I would doubt that an independent Scotland would be part of Schengen.

I suspect you may well be right, but an independent Scotland may want EU membership which may be conditional on accepting Schengen. CTA vs. EU may be a very awkward political decision!
 

snookertam

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I suspect you may well be right, but an independent Scotland may want EU membership which may be conditional on accepting Schengen. CTA vs. EU may be a very awkward political decision!

As it stands it would almost certainly want EU membership, however I don't think the EU would be oblivious to this question and may well realise that it would be harder for Scotland to join Schengen than many other accession states. The bloc can actually be quite accommodating of local circumstances - look at Greenland not breing considered part of the EU despite being part of Denmark which is - so I would be surprised if this was an obstacle to joining. This type of thinking could also have provided a solution to the Brexit question where England/Wales voted out but Scotland/NI voted in.
 
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