RAIL passengers in Clydebank and Drumchapel are having to pay a fiver more than they should for a return rip to the nation’s capital due to a bizarre funding loop hole.

The discrepancy means it is around £5 more expensive for a journey from Singer, Drumry and Drumchapel to Edinburgh than from Dalmuir, which is further away.

For passengers travelling through Clydebank and Yoker, the price gets cheaper depending on how far east you start on the journey. The pricing anomaly does not exist for journeys to Glasgow, according to ScotRail’s online system.

Meanwhile, performance figures for Dalmuir station continue to nudge worse, even as the rail firm pointed to improving national statistics.

Stuart Gray discovered the problem on a journey to Edinburgh from Drumry where a member of staff sold him a ticket, then later returned to say he’d sold a cheaper one to a passenger from Dalmuir.

Though the prices were cheaper with his seniors rail card, it was still £3.55 cheaper to travel from Dalmuir than Drumry.

The 66-year-old Linnvale resident said: “It just doesn’t make any logical sense whatsoever. They are in violation of their customer charter.

“Who would think to look at the price of a ticket further away? It’s a con.”

Mr Gray, a volunteer and member of the Scottish Railway Preservation Society, said given he goes to Edinburgh every few weeks, he estimated he was out of pocked by about £100 last year.

An anytime return ticket to Waverley from Dalmuir costs £25.40 and is 20p cheaper if you start from Clydebank. But if you journey from Singer, Drumry or Drumchapel, you’ll pay £31 return. The problem is not present on single tickets, only returns.

In performance figures published last week, only 47.4 per cent of trains at Dalmuir are on time, down slightly from the month before and continually worsening through 2016.

Glasgow Anniesland MSP Bill Kidd said: “The problems people have in understanding the fares structure used by ScotRail are only made worse by bureaucratic nonsense such as this, about assumptions (whatever that means) made about a journey being more important, and expensive, than the length of that journey.”

Clydebank MSP Gil Paterson added: “The inconsistency between the difference in price to travel to Edinburgh from the Singer line and the Dalmuir line definitely seems like an anomaly. I am going to write to ScotRail to find out exactly why this is.”

A spokeswoman for ScotRail Alliance said the pricing is based on the “route with the most frequent journey opportunities”, so from Dalmuir, through Yoker and Partick, to Queen Street and then Edinburgh. The higher price for Singer/Drumry/Drumchapel is because they can double back to pass through Dalmuir, though that’s not required.”

She said: “Fares are calculated using a number of criteria, including frequency of services, market demand and managing capacity on peak services.”