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The Glasgow Airport Rail Link (GARL) was a proposed rail link during the 2000s to directly link Glasgow Central station with Glasgow International Airport in Scotland, United Kingdom. The link was intended for completion by 2013 and would have had a service of four trains per hour via Paisley Gilmour Street railway station.[1]
On 17 September 2009 the rail link was cancelled as part of public spending cuts.[2]
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GARL would have run from a reconstructed Platform 12 at Glasgow Central on the former Glasgow and Paisley Joint Railway, Ayrshire Coast Line and Inverclyde Line; via Cardonald, Hillington East and Hillington West, to Paisley Gilmour Street station. It would then have run along the Inverclyde Line branching-off just before Paisley St James, onto a new purpose-built 1.2 mile (1.9 km) line which would have taken it over the M8 motorway into the airport station, situated close to the main terminal building at Glasgow International Airport.
The Scottish Parliament on 29 November 2006 passed the GARL bill by 118 votes to 8, thus allowing the construction of the route to begin. Construction was to be in phases with the re-location of football pitches in the route's path at Paisley St James scheduled for 2007, before route clearing and track work in 2007 and 2008. The cost of the route was estimated at £170m, with inflation increasing the cost to a potential £210m.
The Ayrshire and Inverclyde lines are very busy with passenger and freight traffic. GARL would have added to this congestion; to alleviate any problems a third track was to be installed between Shields Junction (the main depot for trains running on the SPT network) and Arkleston Junction, east of Paisley. A re-alignment of the track layout at Wallneuk Junction near Paisley Gilmour Street would also have been required.
The most controversial proposal in the scheme was the building of the line on a viaduct over playing fields in the Paisley St. James area and into Glasgow International Airport.[3] After much discussion, SPT assured local residents that the playing fields would be returned to original use, with even better facilities such as under-soil drainage and new changing rooms. Using a one-piece bridge design, GARL was to cross the M8 motorway and into the airport.
The scheme was also criticised for the absence of direct connections to the rest of the Scottish railway network which would bypass Glasgow Central - historically the two options for doing this have been Glasgow Crossrail and the electrification of the Shotts Line to Edinburgh. In May 2008, First ScotRail announced that the Shotts Line had been route cleared for Class 158 and Class 170 DMU trains to operate on the line and that an increase in services was likely in the near future.
In 2008, control of the GARL project passed from SPT to Transport Scotland who would have overseen the building of the route. Overhead catenary work and a re-modelling of Shields Junction over the past year have already taken place in connection with GARL. In December 2008, Transport Scotland announced that the tender competition will begin in spring 2009, meaning GARL would have been operational in early 2013.[4]
First ScotRail currently uses Class 334 and Class 318 EMU trains on the Ayrshire Coast Line and the occasional Class 314 on the Inverclyde Line. In the proposals drawn up by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, Class 334 units are shown to work the route. However, speculation surrounds actual rolling stock plans for GARL with the likelihood of First ScotRail using 4-car EMUs rather than the traditional 3-car of the 318 or 334 units. First ScotRail currently uses 4-car Class 322 units on its Glasgow Central/Edinburgh Waverley to North Berwick service - themselves ex-airport rail link trains, having been originally built to serve Stansted Airport near London.
In April 2008, First ScotRail placed a bid to tender for a new build of railway carriages for the SPT network of 120 vehicles. These new trains likely to be 4-car sets will operate on the Ayrshire Coast Line and Glasgow Airport services releasing Class 334 units to operate other SPT routes rumoured to be the new Airdrie to Bathgate line in 2010.
On 11 July 2008, Transport Scotland announced that 38 Class 380 trains have been ordered for use on Ayrshire and Inverclyde services and also the Glasgow Airport Rail Link.
On 17 September 2009, the Scottish Government scrapped the airport branch component of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link amid concerns over the need for public spending cuts.[5] The capacity enhancement, resignalling, and a new platform at Glasgow Central are however in an advanced state of planning and will still go ahead.
As part of the Driver Training programme for the route and new rolling stock, design and media company TotalizeMedia were hired to create a simulation of the infrastructure. This simulation was built using a professional derivative of the railway simulator RailWorks. With the cancellation of the project, TotalizeMedia redirected the development into a home simulation title.[6]
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