On Feb 27, 11:31*pm, W14_Fishbourne
wrote:
What I don't understand is why there is actually a need to ban this.

As long as the existence of this journey doesn't create any BoJ
opportunities, what the hell difference does it make to the operator if
someone wants to sit on a train to Rosyth via Kirkcaldy? *How many track
bashing peeps who would take advantage of this, are there?

Presumably it does create BoJ opportunities.

The main problem is season tickets. Since season tickets allow start
and break of journey at all points on all valid routes (including
through trains), if you needed to get from Edinburgh to Kirkcaldy, you
could buy a season ticket to Rosyth, which would be a pretty massive
dodge.

The solution, surely, is to increase the price of the Any Permitted
Route ticket to Rosyth to reflect the distance via Kirkcaldy and
introduce a new Rosyth route Direct ticket at the current price. That
has been done in lots of other places. Or, even simpler than that,
split the train into two in the timetable. That's been done elsewhere
too.

Yes, correct.

This is a dangerous precedent and the fact that it is happening in
Scotland is worrying as the precedent could apply everywhere despite
no-one in England or Wales having a say in it. (I take it that "formal
approval by the Secretary of State" is an error as this would be dealt
with by the Scottish Transport Minister.)

IIRC the Scotland Act 2005 does require formal approval by the UK SoS
for rail matters, but it's formal approval in a similar fashion to
Royal Assent rather than "real" approval.

As other posters have said, however, it is probably invalid as it is
the NCoC that permits the use of through trains, not the Routing
Guide.

But leaving all this aside (and not being too familiar with the rail
geography of Central Scotland), why the hell is a train running to
Rosyth via Kirkaldy anyway?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fife_Circle_Line

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org