Edinburgh – Dundee railway line
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The Forth Bridge over the Firth of Forth
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Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Edinburgh – Dundee railway is a railway line in Scotland . It connects Edinburgh over the Forth Bridge with the Fife region and from there on over the Tay Bridge to Dundee . It is part of the connection from London to Aberdeen . There is also a branch line to Perth . In Fife, part of the route will be connected to Edinburgh as the "Fife Circle" in the S-Bahn service.
history
In 1845 the "Edinburgh and Northern Railway" received permission to build a connection from Edinburgh to Perth and Dundee. The system was based on the idea of crossing the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay by rail ferries; initially only a stretch from Burntisland to the Firth of Tay and the junction from Ladybank to Perth was built. In addition, the world's first RoRo rail ferries went into operation on January 30, 1850 . The construction of the first bridge over the Forth of Tay began in 1871 and was put into operation in 1878. However, this first bridge collapsed in the famous catastrophe on December 28, 1879 , killing 75 people. Construction of a new bridge began immediately; today's Tay Bridge was opened to traffic in June 1887. On March 4, 1890, the Forth Bridge over the Firth of Forth was operational; since then, Dundee can be reached directly from Edinburgh without the use of ferries.
course
From Edinburgh Waverley , the line initially runs east and passes near Edinburgh Airport . The “Edinburgh Gateway” stop has existed in its vicinity since December 11, 2016, and it is possible to change to a tram to the airport terminal. At Dalmeny the line crosses the Firth of Forth on the imposing Forth Bridge; the bridge has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since summer 2015 . On the north bank, in North Queensferry , the line reaches Fife. Only a good three kilometers further, after Inverkeithing , it divides into two branches: the northern branch leads inland via Dunfermline , while the southern branch follows the coast of the Firth of Forth. The two branches come together again in front of Markinch . S-Bahn services will be maintained on these two branches under the name “Fife Circle”. At Ladybank the line branches again. While the western branch leads to Perth , the eastern branch reaches Leuchars after a few kilometers , and thus the train station which is closest to the city of St Andrews . Then the western branch on the Tay Bridge crosses the Firth of Tay, with the north end of the bridge already in the area of Dundee.
Perth Railway Station , 1989
Furnishing
With the exception of the branch from Ladybank to Perth, the line is consistently double-tracked. The route is not electrified (with the exception of the short section from Edinburgh Waverley to Haymarket); Meanwhile, electrification is being seriously considered in the medium term.
Today's operation
While the administration of the infrastructure is the responsibility of Network Rail , the scheduled passenger traffic is mainly carried out by ScotRail . In addition, individual long-distance trains (to and from Aberdeen) from LNER , CrossCountry and Serco run on the route .
literature
- Mike Bridge: TRACKatlas of Mainland Britain , Platform 5, Sheffield 3rd ed. 2017, ISBN 978-1-909431-26-3
- John Jackson: The Scottish Rail Scene in the Twenty-First Century , Amberley, Stroud 2019, ISBN 978-1-44568-308-9
- David Spaven: The Railway Atlas of Scotland, two hundred years of history in maps , Birlinn, Edinburgh 2015, ISBN 978-1-78027-238-2 .