The mysteries of ScotRail travel could make you turn to drink - Vladimir McTavish

As someone who travels to Glasgow a lot, it’s good to see that the peak-time fares are to be abolished

“Hang on”, I thought as I walked down the steps next to the soon-to-be-upgraded facilities. “This looks like they’re just repairing the broken escalators”.

Or rather, not actually repairing them, but building a box around the broken stairways announcing their imminent “upgrade”.

Anyway, as someone who travels to Glasgow a lot, it’s good to see that the peak-time fares are to be abolished. It always struck me as counter-intuitive to price rail travel higher at rush hour. It merely forced commuters onto the road.

Better news still to see the booze ban lifted. What we save on our cheaper fares, we can now spend on a carry-out. Happy days.

The one thing I don’t understand is the random times of day at which alcohol will be permitted.

Drinking on trains will not be allowed between 9pm and 10am. I kind of get the 9pm cut-off time, given that this measure is aimed at curbing anti-social behaviour.

But ending the bevvy curfew at 10am, what thinking is behind this? To most people, drinking booze on a train at ten in the morning is the height of anti-social behaviour.

Who knows anyone who regularly drinks at that time of day? Unless they have a serious problem. Or it’s August and they’re having a drink while watching a morning Fringe show, in which case they are a big supporter of the arts.

One more thing. Why is there First-Class on the Glasgow-Edinburgh shuttle? I get the appeal of paying more for comfort if you’re going down to London, but who is so soft that they can’t slum it with the rest of us on a 50-minute commute?

Ironically, there is no First-Class on the slow train to Glasgow. The one that takes 90minutes to travel 44 miles, by zig-zagging through West Lothian and North Lanarkshire like a snake with no sense of direction.

I’m sure everyone reading this will have accidentally jumped on at Waverley, only to find themselves spending the next hour-and-a-half on a tour of some of the most depressing one-horse towns of the Central Belt, where even the horse has considered its life options and decided it would be better off if it moved to Shotts. That is a journey that is crying out for some extra comfort.

And if I had accidentally got on that train after nine o’clock at night, I would be very much in need of a stiff drink to get me through the dreadful ordeal.

Which brings me back to the random hours of permitted boozing on ScotRail. Nine o’clock is too early to stop drinking. Any later than that, almost everyone on the train is already drunk.

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that any sober passenger on the 11.45 from Queen Street to Waverley on a Friday or Saturday night should be provided with medicinal alcohol to normalise them to the Hogarth-ian excess of their fellow travellers.

I’ll drink to that.