Leven Railway

The weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Kirkcaldy was held on May 17th at the Dean Park Hotel. President John Kilgour welcomed 25 members of the club along with a visiting Rotarian Derek Thomson from Glenrothes and speaker Eugene Clarke.

Lindsay Stewart told club members about an opportunity to do voluntary work on the garden of the historic Law’s Close on Kirkcaldy High Street.

The weekly raffle raised £31.00

President John then had the pleasant duty of inducting two new members to the Club.

Anthony Wekesa, sponsored by Mark Garland and Ian Ireland, sponsored by PP Les Soper were both given a warm welcome.

The winners of May’s 200 Club draw were announced and President John passed on thanks from PP Ken Kelly to club members who had supported the RNLI event at the weekend.

This week’s speaker was Eugene Clarke who has been Chair of the Levenmouth Rail Campaign for the last 18 months. 

The group is campaigning to get the rail line between Thornton and Leven reopened with a single track line which can carry both passengers and freight. The trackway is still there and the first mile or so is still in use for freight, so Network Rail are already obliged to maintain it. The group’s view is that there are no major obstacles in the way. The station at Cameron Bridge would need to be reopened and a new station built in Leven itself, connecting this part of Fife to the Circle line and into the wider network.

The group sees the line as addressing three areas - Community, Individuals and Business. Among the benefits they argue it would bring are - decreasing social inclusion for the 38% of adults in Levenmouth who don’t have access to cars; reducing pollution, reducing freight on the local roads, increasing access to educational and employment opportunities elsewhere in Fife and beyond as well improving access for visitors to Fife.

The group are actively campaigning amongst the general public, local politicians and key influencers. Their current aims are to have the project which has been estimated as costing c £90M, made the top transport priority for Fife Council, to have it adopted by Transport Scotland and agreed by Network Rail in 2016-17. Eugene closed on an optimistic note, by inviting club members to join him on the first journey of the new line in February 2020!

PP John thanked Eugene for a very interesting talk about a development which he felt would be a real boost for Fife. The meeting closed at 2.00pm