Sir – Having followed the campaign by Jane Ann Liston for the return of a rail service to St Andrews and read the documentation on the StARLink website and other sources, a number of her arguments do not hold water.
In her most recent letter, Ms Liston grossly exaggerates that St Andrews is to golf what Wimbledon is to tennis.
The Open Championship comes to the town on a rotational basis and lasts four days, not annually and for a fortnight, unlike tennis at Wimbledon.
And St Andrews is hardly Canterbury with a working cathedral, monastic buildings, bishop’s palace, staff and visits by thousands of pilgrims.
From the StARLink website, I cannot see how a rail link will reduce “unsightly” car parking in St Andrews town centre.
Presumably cars parking in the town centre belong to locals and residents of outlying communities using the town for shopping, conducting business and supporting the local economy.
Or is it perhaps the aim of StARLink for everyone to use the railway to shop elsewhere, forcing local businesses to close?
Ms Liston cites the example of travellers alighting from trains at Leuchars only to see a bus departing to St Andrews before they can cross the bridge to the bus stop.
Equally, this could be the case with the proposed new station.
In any case, at present, buses depart Leuchars every 10 minutes, hardly a great inconvenience if you have just missed the bus.
The planned route of the rail line will devour a lot of prime agricultural land at a time when the population is on the increase and farmers are under increasing pressure to provide greater amounts of food.
Finally, the high volume of rail traffic in and out of Edinburgh could make it very difficult to accommodate additional services from the north without reductions to existing services.
Not for the first time have I been on a train stuck at Haymarket waiting for a platform to become available at Waverley.
Colin Topping. Crathes Close, Glenrothes.
No need forrail station
Sir, – Jane Ann Liston has answered my letter of reply about her demand for the reinstatement of the St Andrews rail link with a few inaccuracies, omissions, assumptions and red herrings.
St Andrews is a wonderful place to live, work and relax and I have done so for the past 68 years. Ms Liston claims that because she thinks it is superior to other Scottish towns we must have a railway back to allow us to match Oxbridge, Canterbury and Wimbledon.
St Andrews has survived and grown in the past 46 years since the closure of the uneconomic line and will do so in the next 50 years with or without a railway station.
The distance from St Andrews bus station to Leuchars is 5.03 miles. The rail line would be well over six miles because of the route she proposes.
It is interesting that StARLink’s Facebook page has had only 550 hits, 150 in the past two years. That is not too many considering the population of St Andrews. I get 50 hits a week on my transport photo site.
Ms Liston should not presume to confuse me with someone who is anti-rail. I am a transport enthusiast with a great interest in all aspects of travelling by air, road and train.
Yes, there are car parking problem at Leuchars but not just due to more people driving to the station and then using the train to travel to elsewhere in the UK.
It is not unknown for people who want to go shopping or possibly those who work in St Andrews, to park their cars free at the station and then get the bus into town.
I notice Ms Liston has not responded to my questions as to where the actual new station to accommodate a four-coach train would go, or to where a car park and taxi rank could be built to accommodate the hundreds of daily passengers that she envisages would be using the rail link.
Ken Reid. 201 Lamond Drive, St Andrews.
Smarten up St Andrews
Sir, – I do not grudge St Andrews a railway station, even though Leuchars is almost within walking distance, but if the town has cash to spend, it might consider some environmental work.
It used to be a joy to walk the historic streets of St Andrews.
Now these once-wonderful streets are littered with overflowing industrial bins.
It does nothing for the image of a town that aspires to be the Oxford or Cambridge of the north.
Charles Wilson. King’s Road, Rosyth.
Windfarms’ flooding link
Sir, – I write with regard to the statements of Peter Grewar in your article, Forestry Commission and SNH will have to be brought into line by one means or another (November 14).
Will this necessity also apply to windfarm developers who build access roads to their turbines?
These roads with their ditches drain water that, under natural conditions, would have been held back in thick heather and peat bogs so preventing flash floods such as the one that devastated Alyth.
The Alyth Burn drops one metre in every 130 metres from below the town bridge to where it joins the Isla. This is already fast flowing and was not the cause of the flooding problem above the bridge as Mr Grewar suggests.
Removing the weir would no doubt help but would be hugely expensive.
The Drumderg windfarm with its roads and ditches must take some of the blame for Alyth’s troubles as it drains into the watercourse.
It would be wise to stop building windfarms on all the hills that drain into the Isla which is so prone to overflowing.
George Donaldson. 48 St Ninians Road, Padanaram.
Treachery of unionists
Sir, – I am disappointed at the loss of jobs in Dundee and indeed across Scotland with the closure of so many HMRC offices.
However, I am more perplexed by the fact that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated explicitly in a national newspaper interview prior to the independence referendum that jobs such as these were only safe if Scotland voted no.
It will be interesting to see how the “broad shoulders” of the union protect those Dundee families now fearful for their futures.
I could fill a whole page with the unionist claims that have unravelled since the referendum but it is up to no voters to compare the UK Government’s present actions against their words one year ago and to judge for themselves who was telling the truth during the referendum campaign.
Henry Malcolm. 331 Clepington Road, Dundee.
Rival nations must unite
Sir, – What is the main challenge facing France in the aftermath of the Paris atrocities?
Alex Salmond is right to point out that military defeat of Daesh in Syria and Iraq would not in itself end the threat of terror which now faces us all (November 16).
The battle against it needs to be fought on the fronts of intelligence and education too.
Why was a well-trained group of fanatics able to inflict such barbarism on innocent people in a major European city?
Why were its members able to plan their efforts so they could have such an impact?
One of the most powerful nations on earth was unable to get its intelligence services to detect what was going on.
Indeed, the Bataclan theatre, scene of the worst devastation last Friday evening, was close to the offices of Charlie Hebdo where another act of terror was carried out last January.
The French people have every right to call their government to account in the face of what seems to be reckless complacency.
Tackling Daesh will not just require improved intelligence of course.
It will need unity of purpose among France, Russia, Britain and the United States.
Sooner or later they will all have to decide whether President Assad’s stay in power is actually the lesser of two evils. That may allow a concerted effort to diminish the main source of the terror threat in the Middle East.
Tackling that threat in our European cities needs just as effective an effort by the intelligence authorities.
Bob Taylor. 24 Shiel Court, Glenrothes.
Open borders policy failure
Sir, – The massacre in Paris shows that a piecemeal approach to tackling Islamic State (IS) is not working.
Where will they strike next: London, Berlin, Barcelona, Rome?
Europe imposed sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine.
Now countries want to ban Russia from athletics over doping claims.
These tantrums are irrelevant today when Muslim zealots are determined to conquer the West and impose their barbaric doctrines.
America and Europe must swallow their inflated egos, stop talking of removing Assad and agree with Russia on joint military action against IS in Syria and Iraq and crush them.
This will require boots on the ground, so a joint American-Russian approach is essential.
A leaked German intelligence document warned Angela Merkel: “we are importing Islamic extremism, anti-semitism and national and ethnic conflicts”.
Mrs Merkel will go down in history as the person who encouraged this 800,000-migrant tsunami and allowed a Trojan horse into Europe.
Clark Cross. 138 Springfield Road, Linlithgow.