By Rab Bruce’s Spider

I had a very interesting conversation with a young German woman the other day. She’s lived and worked in Scotland for years but travels back to visit family quite frequently. The last time she went to Germany was on the Monday when Storm Ciara was causing a lot of travel disruption. She managed to cross the Queensferry crossing and get to Edinburgh airport, all the time fearing her flight would be cancelled. However, the flight left on schedule and she reached Frankfurt to discover that every train had been cancelled due to weather disruption.

How did the Germans handle this disaster? Well, because so many people were stranded, they opened the trains which were stuck in stations and turned them into temporary hostels, allowing passengers to sleep on board. My friend was fortunate enough not to need this facility as she was able to catch one of the first trains which braved the disruption, and she reached her destination with no problems. But what a great idea the Germans put in place. Perhaps there’s a lesson for Scotrail there. Except, of course, most Scotrail trains continued to run during the storm. There were a fair number of cancellations, but we did not face a complete shut down of the rail network.

What we did face was a barrage of media reports of how dreadfully Scotland had coped because the Queensferry Crossing was closed for a couple of days. In contrast, the Germans seem to have accepted that extreme weather causes travel problems and, instead of attacking the Government, simply reported the problems as a public information service. It’s almost enough to make you think the media in Scotland has some sort of agenda. Can you imagine the screaming headlines if the entire rail network had shut down?