A MAN who was spared prison after attacking a ScotRail employee on a train to Helensburgh has – again – done just enough to avoid jail time.

Steven Gilmartin was handed a community payback order earlier this year after he admitted grabbing a female ticket examiner by the neck during a journey from Dalmuir to Helensburgh on November 22 last year.

Gilmartin, 46, of Glavie Road, Knightswood, tried to seize the ticket examiner’s money bag, and bags belonging to passengers, and threw a bottle within the carriage.

He also pulled a body camera from the clothing of another passenger when the train reached Helensburgh, causing the camera to fall on to the railway line, where it was damaged.

Gilmartin, who has repeatedly been told that alcohol lies at the heart of his misbehaviour, was given a community payback order as an alternative to prison – with the condition that he return to court for regular reviews of the order.

At Gilmartin’s latest appearance at Dumbarton Sheriff Court on Friday, his lawyer, Douglas Thomson, told Sheriff Maxwell Hendry that his client had “turned up on time, in control of himself, and completely sober”.

Sheriff Hendry told Gilmartin: “You have pulled things back together just enough to stop me sending you to prison. Most of your problems are caused by your addiction to alcohol.”

Gilmartin will return to court on November 2.