Interesting, Altnabreac - any idea how much Penicuik would cost, and which route it would take (ie, is this a step to reopening the Peebles Loop? Presumably not, given the small population between Penicuik and Gala). If not, would a Penicuik reopening (presumably at 2 tph) then mean 4tph north of Eskbank?
Last news on it was here with a price tag of £150m or so:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/borders-rail-link-150m-plan-for-penicuik-spur-1-2927786
My feeling is that the more likely route to be reinstated is the old Bilston Glen line with stations at Todhills, Loanhead (population 7,000), Roslin (2,000) and then something on the NE outskirts of Penicuik on the eastern side of the A701.
Although you wouldn't get close to Penicuik town centre this way, the town's bus services would pass the station and its a good site for park and ride both for Penicuik and further south (even Peebles etc). You also serve some big employment sites in Roslin and around the Easter Bush / Technopole / Pentlands Science Park areas which could generate decent reverse commuting from Edinburgh.
This gives potential for 4tph calling at Shawfair, Newcraighall and Brunstane. You could speed up services by dropping calls but tricky to know which calls you'd miss. Shawfair is obviously a major development site so you'd want it to increase to 4tph, Newcraighall P&R could also benefit from the increase. And while you might think putting Brunstane calls only on the Penicuik services would be sensible, the potential for Edinburgh College students to get between the campuses at Midlothian (near Eskbank) and Milton Road (near Brunstane) is one of the big potential traffic drivers for the Borders Rail Link.
The Peebles loop options by comparison have several issues, Bonnyrigg / Lasswade are pretty well served by Eskbank so a more central station has limited benefits, the trackbed is built on by Rosewell bypass and then Penicuik station is either very remote from the town (with no bus services and in wrong direction) or on a spur with lots of potentially expensive structures that leads to a site still not in the town centre and constrained for parking and access. Peebles is also just not big enough to justify an expensive reopening of that length.
The things stopping it from happening are that Transport Scotland do not see it as a strategic priority for Scotland and say Midlothian Council / SESTran should be developing it. Midlothian are a small council without much cash or railway expertise and therefore struggle to promote the scheme so stalemate prevails. I suspect it would perform pretty well if it did reopen though.
Is Banchory a realistic proposition? And if you're going to go that far, rebuilding to Aboyne or Dinnet (or even Ballater itself) shouldn't present too many issues, but it would open up the whole of Deeside to Aberdeen commuting as well as tourism.
A few years ago I'd have said no but when you look at the growth in passenger numbers at places like Stonehaven, Inverurie, Dyce and even Insch in recent years it seems like a Banchory line could do well.
Banchory, Milltimber, Peterculter and Cults have a combined population of around 15,000 which is not too bad and you'd presumably have a station in the Garthdee area as well serving SW Aberdeen and the university.
I haven't seen anyone promoting it in recent years but to my mind it could be very successful.
Both lines fulfill Altnabreacs golden rule of a successful rail reopening:
- Population of 10,000+ within 60 minutes (75 at a push) journey time of a major employment centre.
In Scotland basically only Edinburgh/Glasgow/Aberdeen in Scotland qualify as a viable employment centre destination - sorry Dundee
.
The population sizes drop off very rapidly after Banchory so I don't see any prospect for Aboyne or Ballater. The key tourist attractions (Braemar, hills, distilleries, Balmoral) are beyond the end of the railway anyway so don't think extending to Ballater would help tourism that much more than a Banchory re-opening would.
