'How valuable the link to St Andrews would have been today'

Lord Faulkner was speaking at Railfuture Scotland’s Autumn meeting in Edinburgh, in an address entitled, ‘From despair to hope - the revival of Britain’s railways from Beeching to HS2.’ St Andrews was mentioned in the context of the Beeching and subsequent cuts which were made to the rail network in the 1960s and 70s.

At the same meeting, Railfuture Scotland’s Vice-chair Roderick McDougall, a retired chartered engineer, unveiled a strategy to achieve maximum transfer of passengers and freight from road to rail, including: 50 stations to be opened on existing lines; 23 short branches to be built, including St Andrews; a further 44 stations and 16 major lines, plus upgrading the semaphore signalling and speeding up electrification.