Scotland’s Railway Pays £130m to Match Wetter Weather

Network Rail Scotland has spent £130 million since April 2024 on earthworks, drains and rock faces now taking heavier rain. David Harkin, its weather resilience and climate change adaptation strategy manager, said the railway was built for a climate that no longer exists.

On 2 September 2026 the company said that sum is the first cut of a £400 million programme running to 2029. The money follows landslips, flood closures and a Highland drain that could not carry the water now arriving on the track.

Two Years in, a Third of the Money Is Spent

Control Period 7, the five-year funding round that started in April 2024, runs to March 2029. In a statement that day, Network Rail Scotland said it had invested £130 million against extreme weather, about 32.5 percent of the full programme with three years still to run.

Of that £130 million, £73 million went on earthworks and £37 million on drainage, leaving £20 million for other weather work. The Climate Ready Plan for 2024 to 2029, which Harkin led, set the £400 million against the Control Period 7 settlement from Transport Scotland and put a further £3.7 million on climate science and the tools that decide where the next pound goes.

Stephen Flynn, cabinet secretary for economy, tourism and transport, welcomed the spend and said climate pressure on the transport network had become a year-round challenge. Liam Sumpter, managing director of Network Rail Scotland, said rail is central to the country’s economy and that the aim is a railway passengers and freight firms can choose with confidence.

THE SPEND SO FAR

• Programme total: £400 million between 2024 and 2029, from the Control Period 7 settlement.
• Spent since April 2024: £130 million, of which £73 million is earthworks and £37 million is drainage.
• Still to go: £270 million through March 2029.
• Science and planning: £3.7 million set aside in the plan for climate science and adaptation work.

The named sites are only a slice of the £130 million. They show where the company chose to put a public figure on a slope, a rock face or a drain.

WHERE THE NAMED PROJECTS WENT

Those five jobs add up to £28.7 million. The West Coast Main Line package is the large proactive item; Cruachan, Charleston, Ratho and Old Kinaldie are the places where a known weak slope or a known wet cutting got a price.

The weather is changing. So is the way we prepare our railway for it, Network Rail Scotland wrote when it posted the same figures.

The weather is changing. So is the way we prepare our railway for it.

We’ve invested £130m over the last 2 years to strengthen Scotland’s Railway against extreme weather.

It’s part of a wider £400m programme running to 2029. https://t.co/i7D3yp2UHh

— Network Rail Scotland (@NetworkRailSCOT) September 2, 2026

The Charleston Drain Could Not Carry the Rain

The Highland Main Line between Dunkeld and Pitlochry opened on 1 June 1863 through Charleston Wood, a single bi-directional stretch with a line speed of 80 mph. Razia Ali, senior asset engineer for drainage and lineside at Network Rail Scotland, set out what that Victorian kit was being asked to do by 2021.

The soil cutting is up to 5 m high and as steep as 40 degrees, with the railway boundary on the crest. Informal ditches on third-party land have long sat shallow and at a low gradient. Since 2013 the site has needed yearly earthworks exams because of slumping, a stepped crest, marshy ground and blocked drains that washed out the slope and flooded the track.

In February 2021, Storm Darcy closed the line. Route-proving teams found a blocked syphon and a failed overflow pipe, then a slope washout and wrecked cess drainage. A syphon on a rural cutting is a U-shaped drain that carries water under the track; it only works if it stays clear of silt.

After the line reopened, later surveys found the undersized syphon against design runoff could take 42.52 litres a second. Design runoff sat at 247.77 litres a second, almost six times the old pipe. Ali’s team designed a twin-bore 450 mm inverted syphon, each bore rated at 291.93 litres a second, plus 140 m of rockfill regrade and 700 m of upgraded track drainage. That package is the £2.85 million now on the public list.

In January 2024, shallow failures on the Down side were still being blamed on water overtopping the crest ditches, with water-loving plants along the cutting. A £5 million combined earthworks and drainage job at Slochd in 2020 had already shown the pattern on this route: cess drains, off-track drains, slope regrades and rock netting, done together because water and soil fail together.

The Climate Ready Plan puts the same point in plainer words. Much of the railway, it says, was designed and built more than 100 years ago, without knowledge of the climate shift now on the network.

The Hillside Above Cruachan Gets a £3 Million Fix

On the West Highland Line the catch-up has a date, a tonnage and a road closed beside the rails. About 100 tonnes of debris came off privately owned land above the railway at the Falls of Cruachan on 19 December 2022 and took the Oban line and the A85 with it.

FROM LANDSLIP TO THE £3 MILLION JOB

1. 19 December 2022: About 100 tonnes of debris slips 80 metres down Ben Cruachan onto the railway and the A85, and an 84-mile road diversion goes in.
2. 20 December 2022: Network Rail, Bear Scotland and Transport Scotland work the site; the slope above the track is still saturated and treated as unstable.
3. 24 to 27 December 2022: Engineers clear more than 200 tonnes, fit a barrier, relay track and repair signalling; the line reopens at reduced speed on 27 December, eight days after the slip.
4. 2024 to 2026: £3 million is spent to strengthen the hillside above the railway as part of the climate programme.

Sumpter, then route director, said hundreds of tons had to come off the site and that more than 30 feet of track needed repair before passengers could return. Temporary slope works got trains moving; the £3 million is the longer attempt to live with more frequent extreme weather on that hillside.

Ratho, on the Glasgow to Edinburgh corridor, is the urban twin of that job: £2 million to make a steep rock face safer and cut the chance of rock falling on the railway. Old Kinaldie, between Aberdeen and Inverness, is the small wet one, £850,000 of drainage for heavier rain. The West Coast Main Line £20 million is the attempt to do the soil, the rock and the drains before the next slip, rather than after it.

Severe Weather Delay Fell by 45 Percent

The first year of the funding round did move the delay numbers. The Office of Rail and Road, in its annual assessment for April 2024 to March 2025, recorded a 45 percent reduction in severe-weather delay in Scotland, and said that was a main reason Network Rail caused less delay than it had forecast, and less than the year before.

The Scotland Train Performance Measure, which mixes cancellations and punctuality, still missed the alliance target, finishing at 89.7 percent against 90.7 percent, with 92.5 percent the aim by year four. Network Rail delay in Scotland fell from 21.4 minutes per 1,000 miles of train travel in 2023 to 2024, to 17.7 minutes in 2024 to 2025. The regulator also recorded that Network Rail Scotland delivered 37 percent more earthwork volumes than planned in that first year.

The same assessment warned that severe weather is a constant risk in Scotland, so a quiet year may not repeat. It did not. After April 2024, water and debris still took Highland routes out of use.

LINES STILL TAKEN BY WATER AND DEBRIS

• 30 December 2024: The Highland Main Line closes at Kingussie after the Gynack Burn rises above safe limits, and the Far North Line takes flooding and landslips, including mud across the rails at Brora.
• 2 January 2025: Three landslips sit on the Far North Line, with flooding at Beauly, and Highland Main Line inspections follow water at Dalguise and Kingussie, so Inverness to the central belt starts and ends at Perth.
• 22 July 2025: The Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh line closes between Achnasheen and Achanalt after silt and floodwater cover the track.
• 12 January 2026: Snowmelt and heavy rain bring speed limits and cancellations across the Far North Line, Inverness to Aberdeen and the Highland Main Line, with more than a dozen trains cancelled in and out of Inverness that morning.

A cancelled Highland train still lands harder than a slope regrade. The £130 million has not yet changed what travellers argue about when a service disappears, and the fare still sits beside the weather in that argument. Sumpter’s pitch is that resilience is how you keep freight and passengers choosing rail; the closures are the test of whether the earthworks are catching up fast enough.

Rail, Water and Power Now Plan Together

The other half of the programme is not rockfill. Network Rail Scotland launched an adaptation pathways programme that puts climate science next to the people who walk the cuttings, so the next pound goes where it cuts disruption. The Scottish Government’s adaptation progress report, published on 19 June 2026, said the Adaptation Pathways Programme in 2025 to 2026 ran through that year as a way to sequence the spend.

In May 2025 the company also co-founded the Climate Ready Infrastructure Scotland Forum with Scottish Water and SP Energy Networks. A memorandum of understanding brought in more than 20 owners and operators, including Transport Scotland, SSE, Scottish Canals and Sustrans, with the Met Office and universities in the wider group. The government’s report said more than 50 organisations had been pulled into the shared-risk work.

The forum exists because a saturated hillside does not fail on one organisation’s map. At Cruachan the railway and the A85 went together. At Charleston the crest ditches sit on third-party land. Heat, flood and wind move across power, water and track on the same day.

We see first-hand the impact severe weather can have on the railway. In truth, our railway was built for a climate that no longer exists, and careful planning and action are required to manage that challenge. Our role is to understand those risks in detail and make informed decisions that reduce disruption and improve safety. This work is continuous and is essential if we’re to stay ahead of the challenges the railway faces today.

David Harkin, weather resilience and climate change adaptation strategy manager, Network Rail Scotland

The Office of Rail and Road has tied the earthworks push to the better asset knowledge built since the Carmont accident in Aberdeenshire in 2020, and said those improvements were being sustained in the first year of the control period. Harkin’s line is the operational one: the climate the Victorian syphon was sized for is not the climate on the Highland Main Line now.

The Remaining £270 Million Has a Long List

Flynn called the £130 million part of the Scottish government’s £400 million programme and said a resilient railway is how you cut disruption and protect communities. The Climate Ready Plan’s own list is longer than the five named sites: soil cuttings, embankments, rock cuttings, structures, drainage that no longer matches the rainfall, and remote monitors that warn when a slope starts to move.

£270 million is still unspent before March 2029. Charleston’s new bores can take the design storm the old pipe could not. Cruachan’s hillside has a three-million-pound second act after an eight-day closure. The West Coast Main Line has £20 million of work aimed at the next slip rather than the last one.

The remaining money has to cover the cuttings that have not yet had a public price, on a network that still loses the Highland Main Line when a burn comes up and still loses the Kyle line when silt takes the rails. Harkin said the work is continuous. The hillside above the Oban line is one of the places that bill is already being paid.