Sir, I read again with interest that another Railway campaign group, Transform Scotland, wants a “rail revolution”.
The campaign group wants the reopening of the direct Perth to Edinburgh route via Cowdenbeath, which closed in British Rail’s Beeching cuts.
However, as I have written before, it is very difficult to reopen as part of the M90 is built on it.
We are planning to electrify the Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street line with a new-look Glasgow Queen Street station.
The Haymarket upgrade, work on Edinburgh Waverley, signalling work at Stirling Station, the new signalling centre at Cowlairs and the planned work on the new Dundee Station is all great news for Scotland’s railways.
As for the upgrade (double track) on the Highland line and Inverness to Aberdeen, that is a major project.
Parts of these lines which are single track would take a vast amount of investment, which I feel is not achievable or makes business sense.
As for electrifying, it’s not realistic currently.
A new fast electrified route from Perth to Edinburgh may as well be built direct from new and not on the old route.
As for the route via Ladybank to Edinburgh, this is one of the slowest routes in Scotland as it is around the Fife coast.
We are better using money to electrify all of Scotland’s main routes but then we require new electric trains new signalling and in some cases, new track.
Perth Station is badly needing a track makeover now. Inter-City Express group have some great ideas but they currently could not happen.
We are better taking what we have and making it better.
Scotland had some lovely railways which disappeared but let’s look at what we have and improve that and not talk about what in this lifetime is just not achievable.
Edward Carr. Senior railway manager, retired, 75A Edinburgh Road, Perth
Behave with a bit of dignity
Sir, Does anyone want to know the best way to hold Scottish politics up to ridicule?
Then think about the relations between Aberdeen City Council and the Scottish Government (Courier March 4).
This is supposed to be an era when we talk about partnership, mutual respect, joined-up thinking. Now we find that the council wants to ban government ministers from entering council premises.
All because First Minister Alex Salmond was indelicate enough to enter a school during a by-election campaign, apparently without official sanction.
If the people we trust to run affairs of state at both national and local level can’t even see eye-to-eye on something like this, what are those already disillusioned with politics bound to think?
This comes on top of yet another shouting match on a televised debate on independence between the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish Labour’s Johann Lamont.
It’s about time both the main parties in Scotland learned to carry themselves with a bit more dignity.
Over the next 14 months they will be asking us to vote in a general election, European elections and areferendum.
They should start to behave, otherwise voters will be turned off completely.
Bob Taylor. 24 Shiel Court, Glenrothes.
Death camps not Polish
Sir, Your report of a Holocaust survivor talking to pupils of St Paul’s was of particular interest to me.
However, I was more than a little dismayed by your “Obama-esque” and somewhat careless and misleading reference to a “Polish death camp”.
Camps such as the infamous Auschwitz/Treblinka, Majdanek, Chelmno and many others were established and constructed for their gruesome purpose by the occupying Germans.
Therefore you should have accurately referred to these death and labour camps, not as Polish but German death camps, where second to the appalling loss of Jewish lives, were the Poles.
G C Romanowski. 25 Blake Street, Broughty Ferry.
Who benefits from profits?
Sir, Reports that the misnamed investment department of the Royal Bank of Scotland is to be run down are to be welcomed.
It is surprising that the Financial Services Authority allowed customers’ money to be used for gambling.
The profits may have been impressive but were they used for directors’ bonuses, or for the benefit of shareholders?
Malby Goodman. 70 High Street, Aberdour, Fife.
Flight of fancy
Sir, Another politician living in cloud cuckoo land.
Ryanair may use the threat of using Leuchars to get a better deal at Edinburgh but I don’t think you’ll see them landing there unless Fife Councils decide to subsidise each flight as Dundee Council have done with the Loganair Stansted flights.
Dundee taxpayers are subsidising this service, which will never pay and serves very few people.
Surely two councils won’t waste money on such a scale.
You never know, though.
John Strachan. 23 Beechwood Avenue, Glenrothes.