Tickets, please: ScotRail's not the Orient Express, but it's chuffing decent

I’m writing this on the train. Are you reading it there too?

Did you get a seat with a table, or did you forego that for a doubler, subbing the space to prop your elbow or lounge with a laptop for the relative privacy of having just one, rather than three unknown seat-mates? Do you have far to go?

I spend a lot of time on trains, mostly because I hate driving. But also because ScotRail trains are chuffing decent. 

Okay, okay, the 08:07 shuttle from Glasgow Central to Edinburgh Waverley is hardly the Orient Express. But I’ve read that book and watched that film, so let’s not forget that in Agatha Christie’s 1934 whodunnit the titular train gets stuck in heavy snow. Even luxury knows limitations.

State-run ScotRail doesn’t pretend to offer luxury – that would truly be a non-starter. But what this publicly owned operation does offer is clean, comfortable and, dare I say it, reliable transport. Which in itself, thinking back to the bad old Abellio days, is something of a five-star experience.

Back then, the service was nicknamed ‘ScotFail’, so bad were its results. There had been controversy over the 2014 decision to award the contract for Scottish trains to a Dutch government-owned entity, and questions asked over why Scotland’s travellers and taxpayers should be paying money into a system that would divert profit abroad. Passengers got angry, then got organised, with around 20,000 people backing a 2016 campaign that called on ministers to “get tough”. 

the passenger has by now accepted that ScotRail wi-fi is a myth, not a promise

Humza Yousaf was transport minister back then, a period when – as Kate Forbes memorably reminded him during the SNP’s brutal 2023 war of succession – the trains were “never on time”. But it took until 2019 for the contract to hit its midway point and ministers used the break clause to take Abellio off the rails.

Temporary renationalisation followed to take the network through the pandemic, with the step becoming permanent in April 2022. Kevin Lindsay of the Aslef union was delighted. “The railway should be for the people, by the people,” he said. “We now have an opportunity moving forward to deliver a railway which delivers for the whole of Scotland.”

Three years on, do our rail services work for everyone? Accessibility has improved to an extent, with stops reinstated in places like East Linton, Leven and Cameron Bridge and a station serving Inverness Airport boosting overall connectivity in the Highlands. But while Winchburgh looks set to join that list, much of Scotland remains off of the rail map, with communities like Bonnybridge pushing for inclusion. 

And while you won’t find peak fares on the network, thanks to their scrappage in September 2025, ticket prices remain too high for many. Without lowering these further – something that can likely only be achieved through a significant boost to passenger numbers – it’ll be difficult to achieve the modal shift that would really support the country’s net zero ambitions. 

There are, however, clear signals that ScotRail is moving in the right direction. Figures from the UK’s Office of Rail and Road show the network had Britain’s lowest rate of train cancellations in 2024-25, at two per cent against an average of 3.3 per cent. And in a summer survey by Transport Focus, ScotRail received an overall satisfaction rating of 91 per cent – a figure which surely would have made Abellio bosses weep with joy. 

In autumn 2018, the level was just 79 per cent – falling well below the 88.5 per cent target as defined in the franchise agreement. And still, ticket costs went up by 2.8 per cent as the figure was published. Even Christie couldn’t have come up with a crime like that. 

So while comparison is usually the thief of joy, in this case it’s a giver and not a taker. 

Which is not to say that travellers are getting a first-class experience every time. During the Edinburgh festivals, attempting to get in or out of the city by train can mean exposing yourself to sights, sounds and sensations worse than those of a one-star performance artist. On a busy match day, an ill-timed journey can leave you with a loathing for the national sport. Much of that, however, is more to do with the conduct of fellow travellers than in the running of the trains, save from failures to supply enough capacity.

Renationalisation has not cured all ills. Nor has it delivered some of the solutions already in play internationally – Germany’s double-decker carriages, Sweden’s mobile play areas, and China’s maglev all remain like something out of futuristic utopias to the Scottish passenger, who has by now accepted that ScotRail wi-fi is a myth, not a promise. But somehow the staff are friendly, the plug sockets work and even short journeys shoot you through the kind of scenery VisitScotland’s marketing department pumps out into ad campaigns. 

And instead of swearing at traffic on the M8 you can sit and write or maybe read. It doesn’t take Poirot to conclude that that’s the better choice. So let me have some tickets, please.