The Friends of the Far North Line
Cairdean Na Loine Tuath
the campaign group for rail north of
Inverness - lobbying for improved services for the local user, tourist and freight
operator
The principal problem for the single track railways in the Highlands which connect Inverness with the rest of the network, is the shortage of sufficient passing loops to minimise out of course delays.
Two recent journeys between Inverness and Wick on 3rd and 4th July, for the FoFNL AGM, made me fully aware of the extent of the problem. A delay at Dunkeld can still be felt all the way to Forsinard and vice versa and other trains may be infected en route which then spread the virus.
On 3 July, our 10:41 train north to the AGM delayed the southbound at Forsinard by 15 minutes and the next day the 16:00 from Wick had to wait at Forsinard for a similar period. There was some catch-up time in the timetable in Ross-shire but we had to wait at Invergordon for the delayed northbound and this almost jeopardised the connection for passengers intending to travel south to Perth and beyond on the 20:22 from Inverness. A member of station staff on the platform was shouting "Glasgow train - hurry along to platform 4 please!"
Inverness Station is pivotal to railway services throughout the northern Highlands and all three radiating lines are mainly single track. In its immediate vicinity the only double track section is the first seven miles of the line south to Perth and beyond, so late departures can lead to further problems on the HML, or the line to Aberdeen.
A passing loop at Dalcross seven miles out on the Aberdeen line was recently opened, but the one planned for Delmore two miles out from Inverness on the busy section between Inverness and Muir of Ord, shared by the Far North and Kyle lines, has been designed but so far refused funding. The need for the Delmore Loop was identified by the Working Group established by Fergus Ewing MSP in December 2016. The design preparations have been long done and costed, but the wait for funding drags on and on.
This is serious, because the first train of the morning from Wick leaving at 06:18 and due in Inverness at 10:37 is used by passengers from all over the north to make connections to the south and east but also to attend appointments at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. When the train is more than 19 minutes late by Muir of Ord, the train is held there for another 40 minutes to allow for the flight of two trains northbound to Wick and to Kyle which have connected out of the 10:27 and 10:34 Inverness arrivals from Glasgow and from Aberdeen. Currently, an intermediate block signal at Clunes does allow one northbound train to follow another in this section, but that doesn't help southbound travellers.
Long waits at passing places are a familiar feature of travelling on the line. Because there are so few, late running can result in much longer waits than scheduled, especially at the Forsinard loop which is 24¼ miles north of Helmsdale and 21½ miles south of Georgemas Junction. The need for an additional loop in one or both of these sections has long been recognised. It is common to experience a train going in either direction waiting for up to 30 minutes in the passing loop just south of Forsinard Station. This is a major weak point of the line because late running can be caused by the late arrival of connections from the south at Inverness or can cause delay to connections to the south.
Between Dingwall and Helmsdale there are other long sections: 12¾ miles from Dingwall to Invergordon which includes the station at Alness; 12¾ from Invergordon to Tain; 13½ from Tain to Ardgay; 9½ uphill from Ardgay to Lairg. The next three sections are each around 7 miles long taking us to Brora from where it is 11 miles to Helmsdale.
The railway should become much busier with passengers and freight with the massive developments taking place in Easter Ross for the Cromarty Firth Green Freeport. Nigg or Kildary could be developed as a railhead for the Nigg Bay developments. Evanton is likely to grow as a settlement for the future workforce and residents have already requested reopening of the station.
The other issue is the excessively long overall journey time on the FNL. The new December 2025 timetable repeats a familiar pattern of a minute added here and there. The service was much degraded/downgraded at the beginning of this century when the new TPWS (Train Protection & Warning System) rules were applied. Loop entry speeds were lowered. Consequently the end to end journey time was extended by 22 minutes in 2005. What had been a sub-4-hour journey time has been been seriously extended such that the slowest train, the 07:00 from Inverness, now takes 4 hours 31 minutes to reach Wick.
For a reaction at the time to the FNL TPWS implementation, here are Mike Lunan's comments made in May 2006 (FNE 37):
Regular readers will know that I believe that we no longer have merely a belt-and-braces approach to safety (which could be argued as itself being too stringent), but we now have belt-and-braces-and-holding-nanny's-hand approach. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the unthinking installation of TPWS. I don't quibble with Lord Cullen's recommendation that TPWS be fitted, but I do question some of the locations (termini, for instance, where some trains now have to accelerate after passing the sensor in order to reach the right part of the platform). In our many passing loops TPWS sensors were installed for a speed across the switches of 15 mph. This despite the fact that locos used regularly to cross the same switches at 25 mph or more in the bad old days. As a result, any speed over 15 mph results in an automatic application of the brakes (that's what TPWS is for), an automatic record of this in onboard computer, and an automatic punishment for the driver. An unthought-of consequence of TPWS on a long lightly-used line where there are no red signals to go through anyway. Unthinking is surely the right word to use.
Tony Glazebrook, the author of the 2016 Far North Line performance study, which led to the establishment of the Far North Line Review Team, wrote this about the TPWS installation:
Long loop speeds:
The very long passing loops at Muir of Ord, Invergordon, Ardgay and Brora add avoidable journey time, because the loop entry speed - caused by the nature of the hydro-pneumatic points - of 15 mph has not to be exceeded throughout the loop.
This appears to be limited not by track condition but by the simplistic application of the TPWS to these loops. Some other rural lines (e.g. Cambrian Coast) have a more comprehensive TPWS application design that allows a higher speed to be reached on these long loops.
The Highlands railway network is compromised by these deficiencies, so needs the sort of financial investment which does not seem to be registering with the Scottish Government.
The UK Government talks big about Northern Powerhouse Rail and the Mayors in the North of England press the UK Government for action. It would be good if the Highland Council; Perth and Kinross; Moray; Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City would do likewise with the Scottish Government, which is now directly responsible for ScotRail services.
