Students pour out of train at Leuchars

The train, which had stopped at York, Doncaster, Newcastle and Berwick, was full when it left Edinburgh at 14:20, and I spent the hour to Leuchars sitting on the vestibule floor. The apologetic conductor at Waverley put this down solely to ‘St Andrews goes back tomorrow’.

Now, clearly the start of Candlemas semester is not a typical day in the life of Leuchars Station, and that particular train would have been particularly popular being one of the few direct services from England. However, it should be borne in mind there isn’t so much of a ‘big bang’ as the start of the session is in September, and in fact that many students had been trickling back to St Andrews over the past 2 weeks. The staff at Leuchars will tell you that the cross-border trains are very busy most times which could be at least partly due to the propensity of students to travel for a spot of VFR (visiting friends & relatives).