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Fife Circle Line
Legend Markinch (for Edinburgh to Aberdeen Line) Glenrothes with Thornton Cardenden Lochgelly Cowdenbeath Dunfermline Queen Margaret Dunfermline Town Rosyth Kirkcaldy Kinghorn Burntisland Aberdour Dalgety Bay Inverkeithing North Queensferry Dalmeny South Gyle Haymarket Edinburgh Waverley (for East Coast Main Line)

The Fife Circle is the local rail service north from Edinburgh. It links all the attractive towns of south Fife and the inner Firth of Forth facing them, all in all the heartland of Scotland around both its modern and mediaeval capitals and Forth Bridges (old Queensferry Passage).

Contents 1 Service 2 Stops on the Fife Circle line 2.1 Edinburgh to Fife 2.2 Loop line 2.3 Main line 3 Future services

The service includes the Edinburgh-Kirkcaldy stretch of the East Coast Main Line, which includes the world-famous Forth Bridge. On the Fife side, while this line hugs the coast, the circle is formed by a line from Inverkeithing that loops back round to Kirkcaldy by an inland route through the old Fife coalfield. Narrowly speaking, just this line could be called the Fife circle.

There is a goods line connection from Dunfermline to Stirling via Longannet Power Station that rail campaigners would like to reopen to passengers, as is being planned only at the Stirling end. Coal trains that presently cross the Forth Bridge are planned for rerouting by that line so that the bridge's maximum signalling capacity for trains can be used to increase the local passenger service. Fife Circle is a priority for present investment in new rolling stock. Its morning peak services can be notoriously overcrowded.

The operator is now First ScotRail. This is part of First Group, the same company as runs the South Queensferry-Edinburgh bus service 43 that the Fife Circle train parallels from Dalmeny station. Yet they still operate as competing services taking no account of each other, with bus fares slightly higher than train and no ticket interchangeability.

In 2000 a new, much-needed station was opened in the expanding eastern suburbs of Dunfermline and given the name of Dunfermline Queen Margaret, after the 11th century Saint Margaret of Scotland.

• Edinburgh Waverley is major station of the Scottish capital, under the castle rock and opening onto Princes Street and its gardens.
• Haymarket serves the city centre's West End and Tollcross districts.
• South Gyle railway station is located in the South Gyle residential suburb. It also serves the South Gyle industrial estate, the Gyle Shopping Centre, and is about a kilometre from the attractive suburb of Corstorphine.
• Dalmeny is the station at the south end of the Forth Bridge. It is at the edge of South Queensferry.

• North Queensferry is the village at the north end of the Forth Bridge

• Inverkeithing is ancient burgh and port with a shipbreaking history.

Here the main line and loop line divide.

• Rosyth serves the village well enough but is on its inland side nowhere near the port. It also serves the south of Dunfermline.
• Dunfermline Town serves the centre of Dunfermline.
• Dunfermline Queen Margaret serves Dunfermline's eastern suburbs and is near Queen Margaret hospital.
• Cowdenbeath, coalfield towns
• Lochgelly
• Cardenden
• Glenrothes with Thornton

• Dalgety Bay serves the modern town with a shining whitewash look.
• Aberdour serves the village with awards for its "silver sands" quiet beaches.
• Burntisland serves the seaside resort town facing directly across to Edinburgh.
• Kinghorn serves the town at the "horn" of the coast where it turns from facing Edinburgh to the open North Sea
• Kirkcaldy serves the still active old market town hugging the coast with an unusual long sea promenade off the town centre.

The two lines join forming a circle, but half of all services via Kirkcaldy and a few peak services via the loop line continue to the next main line stop.

• Markinch This is a railhead for nearby Glenrothes, a Silicon Glen new town. It is much closer to it than the loop line station called "Glenrothes with Thornton" that was opened in 1992.

The east peninsula of Fife beyond Kirkcaldy is not rail served post-Beeching, and the devolved government is considering backing a branch reopening to Leven, given the role of cross-Forth communications in Fife's economy. To spread some of the traffic onto a Burntisland-Leith ferry crossing is also proposed frequently, the last attempt at it in 1991 was weakly promoted as a commuter route and flopped, but Leith has developed a lot since then, into Edinburgh's government district, but the trains don't go there. Some buses from south Fife do, but buses are notoriously subject to Forth Road Bridge congestion.