TRANSPORT secretary, Fiona Hyslop, has announced that the Scottish government will provide £342m to fund electrification of the Fife Circle lines north of Edinburgh and the Borders Railway from Edinburgh to Tweedbank.

The funding will also be used to procure 69 new trains for ScotRail, including BEMUs for the Fife and Borders lines. New trains will also be ordered to partly replace the operator’s Glasgow commuter fleet.

Funding is being provided for initial phase of the Fife Circle electrification programme, with work already underway on the line from Edinburgh to South Queensferry at the southern end of the Forth Bridge.

On the north side of the bridge, electrification is planned on the Lochgelly - Thornton, Kinghorn - Thornton and Thornton - Ladybank sections of the Fife Circle, as well as the branch from Thornton North Junction to Leven. Having been closed since 1969, the 9.6km Leven branch reopened to passenger traffic on June 2 following £116.6m of infrastructure work designed for future electrification.

Also closed in 1969, the 57km Borders Railway from Edinburgh to Galashiels and Tweedbank reopened in September 2015 at a cost of £294m.

New train procurement is expected to start this autumn.

A ScotRail spokesman told IRJ that the quantity, type and length of the new trains have not yet been defined, but that the order could comprise 41 EMUs and 28 BEMUs with sufficient cars to make maximum use of platform lengths on the lines concerned.

“I am delighted to confirm that the next phase in Scotland’s programme to decarbonise the railway network will involve the electrification of sections of the Fife and Borders railways,” Hyslop says.

“This will support the deployment of battery-electric trains across these key routes.”

“We are delivering around 140km of electrification in Fife and the Borders, paving the way for the introduction of battery-electric trains on these routes which will provide more capacity and reliability, and cleaner, quieter, and more sustainable journeys,” says Katie Vollbracht, principal programme sponsor at infrastructure manager Network Rail.

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