Stena Line Shoot Themselves In The Foot

Just returned from my holiday with the Mrs to Northern Ireland where my parents live. In the past we’ve flown but mostly we do Stena Line’s Rail And Sail deal where you nominate a UK railway station, in our case Blackburn, you can travel from your home station to Belfast via train and ferry.

This will be ok until the 21st November when Stranraer ferry terminal closes, and moves it entire operation to nearby Loch Ryan. This would be fine if there was a train service to Cainryan. At present the train goes into Stranraer where theres a connecting ferry to Belfast.

Now here is the problem, at present the train runs into Stranraer, when the new terminal opens passengers will have change at Ayr for a bus service to Loch Ryan that’s what everybody thinks. But even at this late stage nobody at Stena have a clue how passengers will transfer, but that sounds about right for Stena.

Before Stena became Stena it was owned by the then British Rail and was called Sealink till it was privitised in 1984 then resold and bought by Swedish ferry operator Stena Line.

When it was in the hands of British Rail they ran a through Anglo-Irish train service from London Euston through to Stranraer that left Euston at 1035 arriving at Stranraer at 1830 which connected with the 1900 sailing to Larne Habour.

All that is long in the past, Virgin Trains who now run train services on the West Coast mainline still manage to run trains to Holyhead to connect with ferries to the Republic of Ireland. If they still ran the Euston to Stranraer boat train maybe it would have kept Stranraer as a hub.

Getting to Stranraer by train used to be quite easy you could get the boat train which is direct, or go into Glasgow Central catch the Stranraer train, or even change at Carlisle for the Newcastle Stranraer service.

When you arrive at Stranraer from Belfast by ferry, the train arrives at 1356, and departs at 1443 it used to go into Glasgow but now the train only goes to Kilmarnock meaning if you want to go into Glasgow you have to change at Ayr, which by the time you arrive at Ayr its right slap bang in the rush hour, cue 2 trains worth of passengers on 1 train and you have organised chaos.

Why did Scotrail decided to run the train from Stranraer and terminate at Kilmarnock? It just doesn’t make any sense.