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}} The Fife Circle is the local Rail service north from Edinburgh . It links all the attractive towns of south Fife and the inner Firth Of Forth facing them, all in all the heartland of Scotland around both its modern and mediaeval capitals and Forth Bridge s (old Queensferry Passage ). SERVICE The service includes the Edinburgh- Kirkcaldy stretch of the East Coast Main Line , which includes the world-famous Forth Bridge . On the Fife side, while this line hugs the coast, the circle is formed by a line from Inverkeithing that loops back round to Kirkcaldy by an inland route through the old Fife coalfield. Narrowly speaking, just this line could be called the Fife circle. There is a goods line connection from Dunfermline to Stirling via Longannet Power Station that rail campaigners would like to reopen to passengers, as is being planned only at the Stirling end. Coal trains that presently cross the Forth Bridge are planned for rerouting by that line so that the bridge's maximum signalling capacity for trains can be used to increase the local passenger service. Fife Circle is a priority for present investment in new rolling stock. Its morning peak services can be notoriously overcrowded. The operator is now First ScotRail . This is part of First Group , the same company as runs the South Queensferry -Edinburgh bus service 43 that the Fife Circle train parallels from Dalmeny station. Yet they still operate as competing services taking no account of each other, with train fares slightly higher than bus and no ticket interchangeability. Also, a new disabled-friendly station entrance opened at Dalmeny in 2004 after a successful local press campaign by parents with prams, but it is in the opposite corner of the station to the ticket office and no allowance is being made, even after a further local campaign, for passengers to use the new entrance and buy tickets on trains. Visiting tourists might easily innocently miss being aware of the ticket office's presence, let alone whether it is open, which is only for parts of the morning. It has never been explained why Haymarket Station in Edinburgh has never been listed in the British network as "Edinburgh Haymarket". This make it difficult for Inter-City passengers to know it is in central Edinburgh. In 2000 a new, much-needed station was opened in the expading eastern suburbs of Dunfermline and given the cumbersome name of "Dunfermline Queen Margaret" which takes up two lines in local timetables. The name comes from the 11th Century Queen Margaret . STOPS ON THE FIFE CIRCLE LINE Edinburgh to Fife
Here the main line and loop line divide. Loop line
Main line
The 2 lines join forming a circle, but half of all services via Kirkcaldy and a few peak services via the loop line continue to the next main line stop.
FUTURE SERVICES The east peninsula of Fife beyond Kirkcaldy is not rail served post- Beeching , and the devolved government is considering backing a branch reopening to Leven , given the role of cross-Forth communications in Fife's economy. To spread some of the traffic onto a Burntisland- Leith ferry crossing is also proposed frequently, the last attempt at it in 1991 was weakly promoted as a commuter route and flopped, but Leith has developed a lot since then, into Edinburgh's government district, but the trains don't go there. Some buses from south Fife do, but buses are notoriously subject to Forth Road Bridge congestion. |
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