First ScotRail took exception to my last column but one and wrote me a nice letter trying to explain chronic local overcrowding during the Commonwealth Games.

But last week Which published a survey that lambasted ScotRail for such overcrowding and a 56 per cent customer satisfaction rating.

While they have provided better and more reliable trains on either local service, they show little interest in expanding their potential, especially regarding tourists.

Last month the Fraser of Allander Institute published ‘The impact of ScotRail on the tourist industry in Scotland’, which showed 54 per cent of the 42 million annual journeys made on ScotRail were leisure trips.

Even more important, overseas visitors are four times more likely to use the train, spend three times as much per trip and a whopping 40 per cent of all their spend is in the Edinburgh & Lothians area.

Translating that to the bottom line, overseas tourists bring 17,000 jobs and £740m to the Edinburgh city region economy. On top of this successful summer for visitors, the Scottish Open is coming here next season, Borders Railway will re-open and all this points to growth in visitors.

Of the massive 20 million passengers now using Waverley each year, about 10 per cent of them are to/from East Lothian. Musselburgh now sees 365,000 passengers and a very healthy counter-flow due to QMU. But few of those latter are tourists; by far their largest flow – estimated at 250,000 – is Edinburgh-North Berwick.

Beyond printing timetables (and this season’s batch has already run out), ScotRail support for this huge trade is disappointing: l No promotion of attractions accessible via East Lothian train services; l No joint printed timetables with local buses, let alone joint ticketing or interchange timing; l No guidance at stations beyond a local map advertising places miles away.

Tourists need extra guidance – such as how to get to Tantallon Castle from North Berwick; the battlefield site from Prestonpans; or the National Museum of Flight from Drem. ScotRail supplies none. It took three years of lobbying to even let passengers board their last train running empty back to Edinburgh – but then only during Fringe by the Sea.

Our population growth gifts ScotRail steady growth without their lifting a finger. But tourism has huge additional potential, its counter-flow traffic filling otherwise empty trains at trivial cost.

For 10 years, Aberdeen-based First Group has run ScotRail narrowly: within franchise and for short-term profit. It now faces four rival bids, winner to be announced in October. Given its lack of initiative and mauling by Which, its tenure seems on track to hit the buffers.