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Scotland’s busiest station, Glasgow Central, will partially reopen its main concourse on Wednesday, including for cross-border services, after a fire gutted the Victorian building next to it.
There will be a reduced timetable, including a scaled-down service to London Euston, and passengers are asked to check journeys before travelling.
An estimated 953,000 passenger journeys were affected over the last week after a fire believed to have started in a vape shop on Union Street ravaged the Grade B-listed building adjoining the station.
Glasgow Central typically handles about 116,000 journeys a day, with approximately 103,000 through the high-level station to destinations across the UK and 13,000 local services through the city, suburbs and outlying towns through the low-level station.
With demolition work ongoing to bring down the remaining structure of the building, much of the station will remain closed off and travellers will only be able to gain access via entrances to low-level platforms and the Hope Street carriage driveway, which is normally used for vehicle access.
David Ross, ScotRail’s chief operating officer, said the timetable would be kept under regular review and more services would be added “when it is safe”.
He said: “We realise the closure is causing significant disruption for our customers and we’re very sorry for the impact it is still having on journeys. Resuming services on more than half the high-level platforms in the station is a big step forward and will ensure as many people as possible can travel into Glasgow city centre.
“The safety of our customers and staff remains our absolute priority, and while we have limited platforms and access points to the station available, we will operate as many services as we can.”
Arriva West Coast said 220 weekday trains were diverted or cancelled last week, with trains stopping at Motherwell or being rerouted to Edinburgh. More than 140 trains run by TransPennine Express were cancelled or diverted, while CrossCountry said 35 of its trains were affected last week.
ScotRail, which operates nearly all domestic rail services in Scotland, said it was unable to say immediately how many of its trains were affected because the disruption to its services to both high-level and low-level platforms had been so extensive.
