ScotRail’s safety chief says "80 per cent of all complaints" originate on the West Highland Line’s "ageing" trains between Glasgow, Oban and Mallaig as it vowed to tackle the route’s long-running heating problem.
The state-owned firm is finally looking at running extra heaters on the "freezing" service, dubbed ’The Polar Express’, after a spike in complaints from shivering customers and a probe by a Scottish Government’s railway watchdog.
The constant cold finally snapped Taynuilt teacher Martin Douglas, who like other passengers was travelling wearing outdoor clothing and using a sleeping bag.
His call to flag up failing heaters triggered an avalanche of complaints from fellow customers fed up with freezing on the three-hour journey.
We asked ScotRail if a heater could be left in the carriages overnight.
A spokesperson replied: "For safety reasons, a member of staff would need to be onboard the train before the process of heating the train can begin."
A week later, more passengers complained about "dangerously unsafe" temperatures and we asked ScotRail twice for immediate fixes, but it repeated that its solutions were "longer term".
After we raised the issue with councillors and MSPs, including public health minister Jenni Minto, an investigation was launched by the Scottish Government agency Transport Scotland (TS), which audits ScotRail under the Service Quality Inspection Regime (SQUIRe), "one of the toughest regimes across the UK railway".
TS’s director of rail said earlier this month: "A failure notice will be served on ScotRail if any heating system is not operational or the ambient temperature is less than 16°C or more than 23°C."
Afterwards, ScotRail’s director of safety David Lister told one complainant: "ScotRail will explore the feasibility of using external space heaters at key locations for the start of work to warm the saloon, prior to the train entering services.
"Through the design of the heating system, heat is only supplied to the saloon once the engine has risen up to temperature. The large interior of a train, unlike domestic cars, takes some time to warm up. The current Class 156 vehicles are undeniably ageing, which comes with defects to the components.
"This winter, customer complaints in November and December were 40 per cent lower than the previous year, however, data collated since the original response to the media has shown a higher number of complaints within January, which reflects both the colder weather in January, but also the need for improvement.
"Understandably, 80 per cent of all complaints originate on the West Highland Line. Although the issue is by no means limited to the early 05:17 services that originate at Oban, which has been a particular focus for complaints."
ScotRail is now undertaking "to control the issue in the short term", such as "periodic checks of the problematic vent fan motors, and this year, a proactive replacement of the problematic heating solenoids", and bringing the overhaul of the heating systems in Class 156s forward by a year.
Last week we revealed inspectors had failed heating on the 8:21am Glasgow to Oban services on September 26 and November 29.
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