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Thursday 24 Aug 2017

Politicians get on track with Scotland’s railway

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Scotland’s Railway: Scotland

Scotland’s politicians are getting the chance to see first-hand what it takes to keep the nation’s railway moving.

MPs and MSPs are being invited to spend a day at Network Rail’s purpose-built £4m training centre in Larbert to find out more about how the railway is constantly maintained and enhanced – while still carrying over 96 million passengers a year.

During their visit members also get some practical hands-on experience of fixing problems on an indoor replica rail track. Working with the centre’s instructors, they see how to repair signalling and track faults and view the techniques and technologies used to minimise disruption.

Kilmarnock and Loudon MP Alan Brown, Ochil and South Perthshire MP

Luke Graham and Inverclyde MP Ronnie Cowan visited the centre today (Thursday, August 24) as part of the scheme.

Martin Mina, workforce development centre manager for Network Rail, said: “Our teams are out on the network every night undertaking essential maintenance and upgrade work while still keeping passengers moving during the day.

“Rail travel is more popular now than ever before and the work our engineers are doing is vital to the future success of the rail industry.

“It has been a real pleasure to open the doors of our centre to our MPs and MSPs and let them experience first-hand the life of a railway engineer.”

The ScotRail Alliance, a partnership between Network Rail Scotland and ScotRail, employs over 7,000 people who work around-the-clock to run over 2,500 train services a day and to maintain and operate over 2,800 miles of track and 359 stations.

Scotland’s railway is currently undergoing a period of enhancement unmatched since the Victorian era with huge investment being delivered to increase capacity, improve passenger facilities and introduce new modern, greener, faster electric trains.