THE man who has been at the forefront of the campaign to reopen Laurencekirk railway station to passenger services, now says he is ready to believe that his dream is going to be realised.
Norman Banski, secretary of the Villages in Control Committee and a campaigner for the station for the last 16 years, understands that the contractors will take posession of the station in the third week of July and that locals will soon see work s
tarting on site.
After so many years of campaigning for a station and having experienced disappointments along the way, Mr Banski says he is ready to say it is mission accomplished.
"There is no doubt now that we will get a reopened station. The contract has been awarded and it seems all systems go.
"Network Rail are very positive and Carol Devaney, the person in charge of the project, is very upbeat.
"The last information I had was that 19 trains a day will stop in Laurencekirk, ten in one direction and nine in the other.
"This is far more than some other small stations get. It is good that an excellent case has been made by the operator to run that number of trains and I think we will get a very good service.
"My concern now is that we need to make sure that bus services link in to the station and this is something which the council must organise.
"We must have a properly integrated system and it ought to be possible to bring in a system of through-ticketing for bus and train."
Laurencekirk station closed to passenger services just over 40 years ago and Mr Banski says it should never have shut.
"Anecdotal evidence says it was a paying station when it closed. That was the era of the Beeching cuts and many people considered a 'slimming down' of the railways as inevitable if not short sighted."
Villages in Control was launched in 1992/93 and they made the improvement of transport links, in particular the reopening of the station, one of their chief aims.
"We commissioned a report, which is now part of the regional archive, which showed the extent to which a reopened station would be used and that gave us the basis to step up our campaign and put forward a viable business case.
"We held a meeting in 1998, attended by politicians, councillors and business leaders and that meeting unanimously backed our campaign.
"Over the years we have always had support across the whole political spectrum and everyone has been united. I'm grateful for that support both locally and nationally."
In 2003, a petition was started by the then Conservative MSP David Davidson and this again attracted cross-party support.
Mr Banski helped deliver the petition to the Scottish Parliament's petitions committee and addressed MSPs.
The £3.2 million project to reopen the station was first announced in December 2006, with the reopening projected for a year later, in December 2007.
In June last year however, came the bitterly disappointing news that the reopening was likely to be delayed by 12 months. Design, accessibility and land use issues were blamed for the hitch.
"There was slippage, but the problems have all been resolved and I'm looking forward to boarding a train at Laurencekirk around the second week of December.
"A reopened station will take cars off the A90 and as a result improve safety.
"MSP Mike Rumbles says he will catch the train to Edinburgh from Laurencekirk, so that will be another good advert.
"The station will bring a boost to the economy of the area and bring the growth that we need and want."
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