Rail campaign group calls on public for travel stories

Mock signs for Leven and Cameron Bridge made up by Levenmouth Rail Campaign.

The group is providing evidence for the project to Transport Scotland and as part of that, the members need people’s personal stories of their rail experiences to add to the dry fact and figures. These will then be presented at a special event next month.

Eugene Clarke, chairman of the group, explained: “What we’d like people to do is tell us how they think the line would improve their life, or describe how poor local transport links are causing them problems.

“It might be to do with education, employment or job interviews. Or maybe they’ve had problems visiting relatives or just going out for the night.

“We’ve already had an example from one of our volunteers, Ann Muirhead, who had to cancel a hospital appointment.”

Eugene added: “If people want to take part, they don’t need to worry about writing their story out – they can just get in touch with us and we’ll write it up.

“We’ll use as many stories as we can and we’ll be presenting them at our LMRC Conference on September 23.”

The conference, organised to give the campaigners a chance to make the case for the re-opening of the Levenmouth to Thornton rail link, will involve a number of high profile and well-placed indiduals, including MSPs, MPs, councillors, representatives from the rail industry, Fife businesses and many others.

You can send your story to [email protected] with ‘Personal Story’ as the subject or if you’d prefer to talk about it call 07790 881760 and a group volunteer can make sure it is recorded.

If you would like to find out more about the campaign, or get involved, the next meeting takes place at the Fife Renewables Innovation Centre at Methil Docks tonight (Wednesday) at 6.30pm.

Ann’s story:

“I recently had to cancel an important hospital appointment as I’d no transport to get to Dunfermline and no-one could take me so I eventually gave up. It’s really frustrating because the Queen Margaret station was specially opened for people to get to the hospital. But because we don’t have a rail line open we can’t take advantage of it.

To get to Dunfermline I’d have to take three buses (not door to door) and that would take the best part of an hour and a half for a 25 mile trip.”