by Delmont St Xavier » Fri Aug 08, 2014 12:53 am
There was once a moratorium that the land wasn’t to be built on and maintained for possible future railway reintroduction but money talks and the moratorium was removed in the 1980’s and the land was bought up by developers (example Kelvindale Road) where houses were built upon and so they sold the Kelvinside Station also and that was turned into Carriages – and has been many types of place since then.
In my view, had they retained this and kept the existing rail beds, they could have had a fully integrated and viable public transport service but alas it isn’t to be.
A few years ago, I was down at the North Yorkshire Heritage Railway (the one that they used in Heartbeat) and the voluntary station master told me that he had David Dimbeldy in earlier that week and spoke about the beauty of the station and it was a shame that it wasn’t kept open. To which the station master replied, ‘had they kept it open it would have been a plastic shelter by now.’ He went on to tell me that the way they made the line ‘unprofitable’ was to stick a new - fangled Diesel engine on the line and claim that the costs were outweighing the income.’ This was apparently the method of Beeching’s enforcers….
"Listen, it's too big a world to be in competition with everyone. The only person who I have to be better than is myself. And in your case, that's enough."