17:19 Edinburgh to Dunblane from October

by Communications TEAM | Sep 27, 2019 | announcement

An update from Scotrail on the 17:19 Edinburgh to Dunblane.

“To improve performance in the evening peak, ScotRail will retime the 17:19 Edinburgh to Dunblane from Monday, 14 October to allow more time for the train to uncouple at Stirling. As a result, the service will now arrive at Bridge of Allan at 18:19 and Dunblane at 18:23. Passengers for Dunblane also have an opportunity to change trains at Stirling, arriving at Dunblane at 18:15, one minute earlier than today.”

More details below

Following the public meetings held in Dunblane and Bridge of Allan earlier this year and late last year, I would like to share details of changes that we are making to the 17:19 from Edinburgh to Dunblane from 14^th October. I would ask that you do not share this email publicly, however passengers are now able to see details of the timetable change when using the journey planner on our website.

ScotRail currently operate a combined evening peak service from Edinburgh to Dunblane and Alloa, departing Edinburgh at 17:19 and at Stirling the service splits in two. Unfortunately these services have performed poorly and the detach consistently takes longer than the five minutes given in the working timetable. Any delay to the 17:19 Edinburgh to Dunblane departing Stirling then impacts the 17:40 Glasgow to Aberdeen. When the Edinburgh to Dunblane service arrives at Dunblane, it has to shunt back to Stirling and this impacts the 16:30 Aberdeen to Glasgow, which is our worst performing train having not been on time since the timetable change and currently with a PPM of 14.4% for the same period.

To give more time for the detach to take place, and therefore provide a more reliable overall service, it is necessary to retime the 17:19 Edinburgh to Dunblane later from Stirling to Dunblane. We will be making this change from Monday 14^th October.

For passengers travelling to Bridge of Allan, the journey time will increase by seven minutes.

For passengers travelling to Dunblane, they will have the option to change trains at Stirling onto the 17:40 Glasgow to Aberdeen and there will be no impact on journey time. For passengers who wish to remain on the train, the journey time will increase by seven minutes.

Below is the current timetable, the changes being made on 14^th October and the timetable from December.

From observations, there are approximately 20 to 30 passengers travelling to Bridge of Allan and similar numbers to Dunblane. We recognise that this will impact our passengers, and particularly those who travel to Bridge of Allan, however given the delays that this service regularly suffers from, we need to have a timetable that can be achieved.

We plan to make further changes next year that will improve the journey time of the 17:19 from Edinburgh to Dunblane.