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Closing Date for Online Petition:
13 October 2015 Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to release funding for and establish passenger rail platforms at: Crossford; Cairneyhill; Torryburn; Valleyfield; Culross and Kincardine; thereby linking Stirling to the Fife Circle.
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/GettingInvolved/Petitions/ForthCircleRailLine
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There is rail bed going along the north side of the Forth (temporarily turned into cycle path, I think?) so might not be that far fetched?
There's an actual rail line too. Used for coal deliveries to Longannet.
Think this is the freight line that was primarily used to supply Longannet with captured carbon coal, so it should be even easier than that. Of course, it would need someone (Scottish Ministers) to agree to subsidise services.
There are (were) two east-west railway from Fife to Clackmannanshire, both originating in Dunfermline.
The Kincardine line is open from Alloa to Dunfermline, via Longannet but is used only by coal trains and the occassional enthusiast special. It is the line in question here.
The Dunfermline and Stirling Railway was the original mainline through west Fife, with its name suggesting the origin and destination. It is now the cycle way running from the outskirts of Dunfermline to roundabouts Clackmannan town. It closed in the mid 1980s when Comrie Colliery shut, the coal from which being the sole reason it was kept open. It was served by a separate station in Dunfermline; "Dunfermline Upper", what is now called Dunfermline Town was "Dunfermline Lower".
Map below summarises.
West Fife Railways by andy a, on Flickr
One difficulty is there is no south-facing junction at Dunfermline for trains to/from Edinburgh. They would have to run into Dunfermline then change direction, which would require a new bay platform or similar and pointwork to allow the change of running lines. Before the Stirling line opened to Longannet, coal trains from the Hunterston Terminal caused all sorts of congestion by having to run through the central belt, use the Forth Bridge, head into Fife as far as Thornton Yard where they could be turned, and then head back the other way through Fife and Dunfermline again to approach Longannet from the east.
Can we have the line through Lower Largo opened please?
One difficulty is there is no south-facing junction at Dunfermline for trains to/from Edinburgh. They would have to run into Dunfermline then change direction, which would require a new bay platform or similar and pointwork to allow the change of running lines. Before the Stirling line opened to Longannet, coal trains from the Hunterston Terminal caused all sorts of congestion by having to run through the central belt, use the Forth Bridge, head into Fife as far as Thornton Yard where they could be turned
Dunfermline Lower/Town used to have a bay platform on the south side. The waiting room on the Edinburgh bound platform seems to have been rebuilt and currently infringes the bay but it could be reinstated with one set of points and some signals.
The Hunterston trains were usually turned in the sidings behind Asda between queen Margret and Halbeath.
The railway remained open from Stirling to Cambus with the branch to Menstrie for freight (paper and whisky IIRC) and the rails remianed with a couple of 60 ft lengths removed in the vicinity of the current Alloa Station
Remember too the line forked at Alloa and ran up to Tillicoultry, and on to Dollar & Crook of Devon to the North
Dunfermline St Margarets is just East of the old Dunfermline Upper IIRC. A lot of the coal at Longannet also came from Westfield opencast which was on a branch line from Thornton Yard (which was itself built around the white elephant pit (Thornton?) that was a total failure)
A lot of the trains ran with radio controlled Class 20 locos 2 at one end 1 at the other.
A temporary station has been built at Culross for a couple of special seasons.
On a completely separate (but rail related) subject, while I cycled down the Great Glen last year (Sept 2014), along a disused railway line the the south end of Loch Oich, there was a mass mudbath where they appeared to be building a new line at the old platforms near the Active Highs outdoor activities centre. Anyone know what they are doing and if its progressed?
@Tulyar from photos I've seen, the traffic on the Menstrie branch was latterly molasses tankers for feedstock of the Distillers Company yeast factory.
Line to Dollar remained open until late 1970s for coal traffic to Longannet from the Dollar drift mine; the rest of the pits in the scheme were connected via the underground conveyor system, but Dollar sat behind a fault and couldn't be connected.
Dunfermline "Upper" was about 1.5 miles west of current St. Margarets station, the latter lies just west of the former junction to Upper.
The pit at Thornton was known as Rothes and gave it's name to the new town of Glenrothes. It was expected to provide 100 years+ of coal and employment but shut after less than 5 years and about 8 times overbudget after relentless geological and flooding problems. Apparently the old miners of Fife had warned the National Coal Board of the unsuitability of the area for a mine but had been silenced by the science, techonology and "we know best" attitude of the latter.
@DaveC the old railway there is the "Invergarry and Fort Augustus Railway" which was meant to provide a mainline up the Great Glen from Fort William to Inverness. It was one of those railway mania schemes that was started but never got anywhere and never really had a realistic hope of being commercially viable. It closed some time in the 1930s although opened again during WW2 for timber trains. The station at the south end of Loch Oich was called "Invergarry". I believe there's a railway society trying to build a small museum on the site of the old station, including a length of rails to run up and down, which is probably what you saw?
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