MAY PEN, Clarendon — As the Government looks towards expanding the recently resumed passenger rail service to more parishes across the country, Minister of Transport and Mining Audley Shaw has issued a warning to those who have built structures on railway land.

“Persons who have constructed on the railway did it at their own risk; we will have to reclaim our railways. The rail system has got to be restored in Jamaica,” he said during a Jamaica Labour Party area council meeting in Chapelton on Sunday.

He added that a special review will be done in cases where houses are involved, but he made it clear the expansion will move ahead.

“The previous minister started a train service from two locations and I believe that, going forward, the train service in Jamaica must be restored. The rest of the world has now used technology to improve their railway services while ours have been closed down for 30 years. We need to restore the rail service in Jamaica. Apart from the students using it now, it can be expanded and will be expanded,” said Shaw.

He was responding to a call from Member of Parliament for Clarendon Northern, Dwight Sibblies, for a rural school bus system in the parish to alleviate increased bus fares.

Shaw pointed to the train as the solution. There is now a train service that has been put in place to ferry 400 St Catherine students to and from school. The plan is to expand that service and eventually have the trains roll across the country once again. A part of the larger plan is service from Montego Bay to Appleton Estate as a tourist attraction. After that leg, Shaw said, the service would be expanded from Montego Bay to Kingston. The trains, he added, “must come back”.

“I’ll be looking very carefully at how we can design a programme especially in areas that are most affected with high volumes of children so that we can create a special bus service,” he promised.