Hello and welcome to the Independence Daily Travel podcast with me Simon Corder from a very busy Kingscot Station in central London.

Just so happens today, good Friday and right through the Easter weekend. It's the only place in London from which you can get a train direct to Scotland.

Just looking at the departure board, the 11 o'clock to Edinburgh all set to go.

Another one at 1130 at noon.

It's the Highland Chieftain setting off for Inverness.

No trains running at all from London, Houston to Glasgow, of course,

that's due to network rail engineering works. And goodness, in terms of flights, I am seeing an

awful lot of flights, I count, I think, 14 so far between London and Scotland on British airways that have

been cancelled, to and from Glasgow 5, Edinburgh to Aberdeen. And I wanted to talk about travelling

between London and Scotland.

It's a journey which is very, very competitive, particularly between London and Edinburgh.

And yes, as a good environmentalist, any traveller would always want to take the train.

It has less of an impact and there has never

been more competition thanks to the arrival of LUMO which has so-called open access rights. That means

it runs independently of the state-owned company L-ER, between here and Edinburgh Waverly Station.

And it provides really useful competition.

Now, I've travelled on LUMO.

I've travelled on LNERR more times than I care to remember.

And LUMO is very much the budget end. I look around at the fellow

travellers. They're all like me. Price conscious. It's a really efficient way actually of getting

between London and Newcastle where it stops because it's effectively non-stop or sometimes it stops

at Stevenage.

...