A BORDERS man has slammed Scotland’s rail service after cancellations saw his 17-year-old granddaughter stranded in Edinburgh.

A driver shortage continues to hamper hundreds of journeys across the country with ScotRail locked in an ongoing pay dispute.

John Birnie, 74, said his granddaughter visited the capital last week after finishing her Higher exams.

But Mr Birnie, a community councillor in Galashiels, said she was forced to wait in Edinburgh Waverley for hours on her own due to the cancellations.

“She toddled down to the train station to find there’s no train, it’s cancelled,” he said. “She waited in the station and the next train was cancelled.”

Mr Birnie claimed his granddaughter was forced to wait several hours in the station during the “fiasco”.

He added: “She’s 17 years old – it’s dangerous. A train station can be a very dodgy place to hang around.

“Young girls are pretty vulnerable and they should be able to go to Edinburgh safely and expect to get a train back without all this hassle.”

Further cancellations meant that Mr Birnie had to ask relatives in Edinburgh to pick his granddaughter up before dropping her at the station the following morning to travel back to Tweedbank.

“Parents will be really concerned about letting their kids go up to Edinburgh,” said Mr Birnie, of Coopersknowe. “This is an absolutely shocking state of affairs for our part of the country. It’s just unacceptable.”

Temporary timetables – including on the Borders Railway – are in place across Scotland in a bid to offer customers more certainty that their train will run.

But on Sunday around 320 services were cancelled due to the continued shortage of drivers.

Among those affected were Mr Birnie’s family from England, who had come up to stay and decided to go shopping in Edinburgh.

“They were stranded in Edinburgh,” he said. “They had to come back down on a jam-packed bus, people were standing on each other’s feet.

“The impression we have left on these people from England is terrible.”

And Mr Birnie, who has lived in Galashiels for 14 years, said that the disruption could be bad for businesses in the Borders.

He said: “Tourists might not even come down to shop in Galashiels if they can’t get a train from Waverley to Tweedbank. This could scare them all away.”

Scotland’s train services have been nationalised since April 1 when a Scottish Government-owned company took over from Dutch firm Abellio.

ScotRail had relied on drivers working extra hours to keep services running. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was important to strike an agreement with workers but also stressed that any pay deal must be “affordable”.

She also apologised to passengers last week, stating: “I always take the opportunity to apologise to any member of the public in Scotland who doesn’t get from a public service – whether that is the railway, or any other service – the standard they have a right to expect.

“And that includes those who are being disrupted right now because of the temporary timetable being put in place by ScotRail.”

Trade union leaders rejected a 4.2 per cent pay deal this week.

A Transport Scotland spokeswoman said: “The unions need to agree on a deal that is both fair and affordable, particularly in the context of wider public sector pay policy.

“While, regrettably, this decision appears to mean further disruption for passengers in the immediate term, given there is no indication that drivers will return to previous rest day working and overtime arrangements, we would encourage all parties concerned to get back round the table to resume negotiations.”