Railway re-openings have been all but canned by the new Labour Government, so the two scheduled for 2024 look like being the last additions to our national rail network for some considerable time.
While the Ashington Line from Newcastle has been delayed until December, when only a limited number of its new stations will be ready for service, there were no delays to the £116m Levenmouth Rail Link north of the border, which opened as planned on 2 June 2024.
This is a 5½-mile long link from Thornton North Junction near Glenrothes to the Fifeshire Coast settlements of Leven and Methil, with one intermediate station and park & ride location called Cameron Bridge.
Having a free day in then Scottish capital (Sunday, 15 September 2024) I decided to try out the new service and see what Leven has to offer the visitor.
The initial plan is for hourly services to and from Edinburgh Waverley that have a end-to-end journey time of just over an hour, with plans from 2025 for a half-hourly frequency and services alternately running via Kirkcaldy (as now) and round the Fife Circle via Dunfermline to and from Edinburgh.
But the current emergency ScotRail timetable has put paid to these plans, and on the Sunday of my trip there was a three hour gap between a departure from Waverley at 09.17 and the service I travelled on at 12.17, after which trains were running at two-hourly intervals.
The services pictured here on 15 September 2024 show 158715/170403 departing at 13.55 with 2K32 to Edinburgh Waverley, then 170405 arriving at 15.23 with 2K03 from Edinburgh Waverley (14.16).
Heading onto the branch at Thornton North junction less that ten minutes from Journey’s end it was good to see that, unlike the Borders Railway, the Leven Link has been future-proofed by being double track for most of its length, with concrete bases installed for future electrification masts and platforms built to hold 8-car trains.
There were a respectable 25 people alighting from my train at Leven (13.23) and there had been a reasonable number of cars in the 125-space car park at Cameron Bridge. Leven station is well situated in the town centre, next to the bus station and a good point from which to walk the Fife Coastal Path, which passes nearby.
Taking a ten-minute walk back to an aged iron bridge on the approach to Leven Station there was a good view of a departing train and the River Leven running alongside the railway line.
From another nearby bridge there was a bit of bonus railway interest in the form of preserved electric unit 313121 in its Network Rail yellow livery, one of only two surviving Class 313 units, which has found a home in the yard of the Fife Heritage Railway, as seen above.
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