Case Study – Borders Railway

Case Study – The Borders Railway

Author’s note: The Lewes to Uckfield Railway route is some 7 to 8 miles long. The Government and East Sussex County Council have dithered over the decades as to whether to support reopening the line. Meanwhile, in Scotland they have got on with the job of reopening not just 8 miles of track but over 4 times that! The new Borders Railway has been a great success. Hopefully, this should give encouragement to the Government and the County Council to get on with the job here in the South East of England.  

The Borders Railway connects the city of Edinburgh with Galashiels and Tweedbank

A 35 mile length of  railway line reopened in Scotland, including relaying the track in 2015. The Borders railway is the longest new domestic rail route to be built in the UK for over a century. It reconnects the Scottish Borders region to the national rail network. The railway follows most of the alignment of the northern part of the ‘Waverley Route’, a former double-track line in southern Scotland and northern England that ran between Edinburgh and Carlisle. 

The Waverley line was controversially closed in 1969 as part of cuts to the rail network drawn up by Dr Beeching.  A campaign to revive the line built up in the 1990s. The Scottish government decided to reopen the railway in 2006. Construction finally started in April 2013. 7 new stations and 42 new bridges were built over 2 years. The cost was £350m. It was opened by the Queen in September 2015. It was used by nearly 126,000 passengers in the first month. 

It was initially thought that the Borders Railway would carry around 600,000 passengers a year, but by 2018/19 that figure had risen to 1,789,467. Such high demand led to Scotrail introducing more carriages and a more frequent service. It has been so successful that a £10 million feasibility study has now been commissioned to look at extending the line from its current terminus.

References: 

Institute of Civil Engineering 

Wikipedia 

Campaign for Borders Rail

 

 

 

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