Scots rail link will relieve road network
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IN The reopening of a missing link in central Scotland's rail network will remove thousands of trucks from the roads, according to one of the project's main backers.
English Welsh & Scottish Railway made the claim after committing £250,000 towards reinstating the Alioa-Kincardine line. This will give traffic moving between Fife and southern Scotland an alternative to the heavily used Forth rail bridge.
The total cost of the project will be £13m and more than half of this sum has now been secured, raising hopes that the entire rail link between Stirling and Dumfermline will be restored by 2003. One of the biggest beneficiaries could be Scottish Power, which supplies the Longannet power station near Kincardine with coal from open-cast mines in Ayrshire. Some of this coal already arrives by rail via the Forth bridge.
However, David Shaw, director of Motherwell-based Sam Anderson Newhouse, which had the main road haulage contract for supplying Longannet with coal until last year, doubts if EWS has sufficient rolling stock to cope with extra work.
-It could take work off vehicles but it depends on EWS getting their act together," he says. "I am far more worried about the price of fuel than [WS,"