Britain's railways were once the envy of the world.
You could get a train from almost anywhere...
..to almost anywhere else!
They were the network that supported an industrial superpower...
And here we go!
EXPLOSION Oh, ho!
I've never seen anything like that!
..but, today, 4,000 stations and 8,000 miles of track lie silent.
This station feels truly lost.
So I'm setting off to discover more of Britain's lost railways.
Wow! This is something else!
They tell a story...
Look at this!
..of how we once lived...
Oh, I love that!
..and how we once worked...
This is one heck of a piece of engineering!
..and they help reveal how our world has changed today.
Yahoo-oo!
This time, I'm in Edinburgh...
..and, like many of the four million people
who visit this great city every year,
I got here by train.
The East Coast Railway
from London to Edinburgh
is one of the backbones
of our modern network.
But, little more than 50 years ago, there was an alternative -
a railway that stretched south, beyond those hills,
through the heart of the glorious Scottish Borders.
The railway I've come to explore
was called the Waverley Route.
It ran for almost exactly 100 miles across the border to Carlisle,
where it connected with the
West Coast route to London.
The Waverley Route closed in 1969 and there was uproar.
It turned the big towns of the Scottish Borders
into the most isolated in the country.
But, for those that live here, the railway's memory is cherished.
MEN: One, two three!
The Waverley Route is far from forgotten.
An exciting thing about this lost line
is that it might just come back.
There's a real effort going on in these parts
to re-establish the old Waverley Route.
In fact, part of it has already been reopened.
OK...
Ha! Here's the proof.
TANNOY CHIMES
Only got a few minutes before my train leaves.
Best get going!
The first part of my journey is along a lost line...
..that's been found again.
At 30 miles, it covers less than a third of the old Waverley Route,
but it's the longest stretch of British railway
to be opened in over a century.
So we're now just starting to branch off right from the main line,
heading south onto our line.
The new Borders Railway reaches all the way to the Tweed Valley.
It follows the old Waverley route almost perfectly,
which has proved very useful at places like Eskbank,
eight miles out of Edinburgh.
Just south of the station,
I've come to see one of the standout features of the Victorian railway,
and it's where I'm meeting engineer Hugh Wark...
How many arches along here?
23 arches, yeah. 23 arches along?!
..the project director on the new Borders Railway.
Well, this is magnificent, isn't it? It's beautiful.
This is Newbattle Viaduct.
It was built for the line opening in 1849 by John Miller,
who was the engineer for the line.
It's got 23 arches and this is the tallest one in front of us, 54 feet,
specially strengthened because of its position in the river.
When the bridge was built, the piers were actually hollow.
You could see through the middle of them.
You can see the arch in the middle of the pier. In here, yeah!
These were in-filled at some time in the past
as part of strengthening work.
You can see the metal strengthening, which is actually old railway rails.
That's a traditional way of strengthening bridges in the past.
You use old rail? Old railway bullhead rails, yes.
I never knew that. That's beautiful!
The Newbattle Viaduct was once described by Queen Victoria as "very fine"...
..and who could disagree?
How much work did you need to do on this viaduct here
to make it suitable to be reopened?
Well, you know, Rob, it was in remarkably good condition -
considering it had been shut for almost 50 years
and nothing had been done to it in that period of time.
All we really had to do was basic masonry repairs,
pointing work to fill in gaps.
And, you know, one of the reasons why it was in such good condition
was that, sometime in the past, probably during the 1940s or '50s,
there was a new concrete deck placed on top of the bridge,
and that's stopped the water percolating into the stonework
and prevented a lot of deterioration in the structure.
Is there something about the way the Victorians
did their civil engineering that has made it last so long?
Well, they obviously used pretty good materials.
It was good sandstone and it's been well-constructed.
There's no doubt, if that Victorian infrastructure hadn't been there,
we wouldn't have been able to build a new railway into the Borders.
But Hugh and his team didn't always have it so easy.
Over two years, they built seven new stations.
42 new bridges.
They laid 100,000 sleepers
and over 1,000 new rails.
In total, the line cost almost £12 million per mile to resurrect
and one of the biggest challenges
was just 500 yards north of the great Victorian viaduct.
Well, this is the A7, a major route from Edinburgh to the Borders.
This section of it was built in the 1980s.
Of course, they bulldozed the old railway away,
which crossed right across the line of the road,
so we had to build this new bridge.
Just what did it take to build it?
You can see it's got two spans.
Each span's made up of two U-shaped concrete beams.
Each one's over 100 tonnes.
They were cast in Ireland
and brought over here in huge transporter vehicles,
so a 1,200-tonne road mobile crane, one of the biggest in the UK,
could lift them into position.
You don't have any idea, when you're riding that train,
how much work it takes to achieve this.
Oh, here we go, here's one now.
This was a huge construction project.
It's fairly major engineering, yes.
Are you proud with what you've achieved here?
It's a great achievement and it symbolises the rebirth of the line.
TRAIN HORN SOUNDS
Coming up, I reach the stunning valley...
Look at this!
..that was home to Scotland's greatest writer, Walter Scott.
And I find a remote station...
Oh, yeah.
..with a quite unique footbridge.
Oh, my word!
This early part of my journey isn't so much about a lost railway,
more one that's been rediscovered.
For more than a century, until 1969,
the Waverley Route ran
right across the Scottish Borders,
from Edinburgh to Carlisle.
But four years ago, the northern part of the old line returned.
It is my very happy duty
to declare the Borders Railway open.
In September 2015, the Queen was here
to open the longest new railway in over a century.
And what an incredible stretch of railway it is.
Ten miles outside Edinburgh, the line starts a long climb
that peaks at almost 900 feet.
Today, this diesel engine makes easy work of it,
but, back in the early days of this line,
the steam engines would have been puffing hard up here.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
But the reward for climbing so far
is a glorious downhill run,
where the line crosses the twisting Gala Water river 15 times.
That's 15 bridges for this relatively small stretch of this line.
With landscape like this to deal with,
the Waverley was never the fastest route between London and Edinburgh,
but reach London it did, unlike today.
TANNOY: This train will shortly be approaching Tweedbank,
which is the last and final stop.
Here we go, just crossed the River Tweed,
which means that my train journey for this line is almost at an end.
Having passed through Galashiels,
the brand-new line terminates
at what was, until very recently, a field.
But the end of the line is where I'm meeting one of the locals,
who worked for years to make it a reality.
Oh, Simon. Hi, Rob. Good to meet you.
The pleasure's mine, Rob.
I have to say, that is quite a spectacular journey.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. And it's brought me here, to Tweedbank.
Kind of in the middle of nowhere. Well, I'm glad you said that.
Yeah, I'm being a bit facetious.
This point was as far from Edinburgh
as the authorities would dare build the new line,
but did they need to be so cautious?
How successful has the line been, then? Fantastic.
So, the first three years, four million people have used this line -
that's more than twice the expected number.
Wow! Yeah. It's opened up the Borders to the City of Edinburgh.
You know, so the second-biggest tourist market in Britain
is now less than an hour away from the centre of the Borders,
so that's bringing a lot of people in here.
So there's this lovely balance.
You've got commuters from the Borders heading into Edinburgh,
say, in the morning, then you've got the tourists heading out,
and then they switch back at the end of the day! Absolutely.
How does it make you feel, personally,
to feel the success that this line has brought?
Yeah, can you see my chest swelling?
I'm really proud to have been involved.
If the railway was extended further,
it would continue south along what's currently just a footpath,
and that's becoming more and more likely.
Just this year,
the Government has backed a study
assessing whether the entire Waverley Route could be reopened.
We consider this Phase 1. You're quite hopeful, are you?
I'd say that we're closer to getting that ambition now than we ever have been.
It makes perfect sense to make it into a through line.
Railways are all about bringing people together.
It doesn't so much matter that there are longer stretches
with fewer people living there.
The whole point of the railways is to bring people together
and give them those opportunities,
and that's really where this line makes perfect sense. Brilliant.
So, tell me, what can I expect on my journey down to Carlisle, then,
walking the old line there? Oh, there's so much more to see.
You're going to see some beautiful towns, in some beautiful settings,
you're going to see some spectacular scenery.
I sometimes think of it as the Highlands in the Lowlands,
that's what you're gonna see.
Very, very nice. You get a taste of that
on the way out from Edinburgh already. There's even more to come.
Listen, Simon, thank you so much.
Congratulations with what you've achieved
and the very best of luck for the rest of it.
Thanks so much, Rob, really enjoy yourself.
You've set me on my way, I'm skipping away! Bye-bye, now!
Well, this feels a bit more like familiar territory for me.
These long, flat, straight lines,
and the railway line itself
ran pretty much where the road is here today,
which is just one of the challenges that would need to be overcome
should the line be extended any further.
If that did happen,
the old station at Melrose would be ready and waiting.
For now, it enjoys a great view of the town's bypass.
It always makes me smile when I come across a disused railway station,
especially when they're still so recognisable as such.
Melrose was never a big place,
but it had a very fine station,
bringing visitors to one of Scotland's great rivers.
The Tweed Valley is where Scotland's greatest writer, Sir Walter Scott,
chose to settle,
and it was his Waverley novels that gave my lost railway its name.
Just look at this!
We often think of Scottish landscapes as great lochs and rugged mountains,
but the more gentle terrain of the Borders is pretty special, too.
Walter Scott lived just a couple of miles from here
and you can see why.
The Waverley Route didn't linger in this valley long, though.
South of the Tweed, the old line crosses acre after acre of fields.
For 12 miles or so, there's no town or village to be found...
..but there was another station.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes! This is lovely!
Wow.
Hassendean Station.
Not exactly what I was expecting. This is gorgeous!
I could poke around here all day!
For 120 years, trains came through here to and from Edinburgh.
Those that stopped were often serving
the farming needs of the local Earl of Minto.
But Hassendean is now the home of architect Tom Pyemont.
This is marvellous! I've entered a whole separate world, coming into here. Isn't it great?
We bought it back in the late '80s.
My background is conservation architecture,
and driving past this group of buildings which looked all sad,
and we eventually bought them,
and then decided to renovate it and live here.
How derelict was it? Very.
The windows were all broken
and, of course, there was no electricity or water.
The platform either side, we've in-filled
because all the ballast was taken away and it was quite a drop.
This is the edge of the platform here, isn't it? Same over there.
The steam engines would have come in right through here.
What were the original station features, then,
that were here still?
There was very little actually left when we arrived.
One of the major things was this canopy of the waiting room,
which actually had progressive deflection
and it was bending right down. Oh, really? Yeah.
So we managed to get some cast iron columns from one of the mills
in Hawick that was being demolished,
just to prop it up, and they looked so good that we kept them!
We managed to get the cast iron guttering, as well,
from a place in Newcastle
that specialises in railway-style cast iron guttering.
They look great! I mean, it looks...
I mean, I'd be convinced that this is how it always was.
The centrepiece of the project has undoubtedly been
the restoration of Hassendean's footbridge.
The only wooden footbridge of its type left in situ.
Oh, yeah! I mean, there's a decent view down there, but...
Pretty good. ..up here. Oh, my word!
So, I've got the real clear line of the old railway route,
you can see where it came in, along here, from Edinburgh this way,
and then heading out down towards Carlisle that way. That's right.
But otherwise, apart from that, there's...
..there's nothing around here!
Not a lot, no. It's mainly agriculture.
That's Minto Hill up there...
..and Minto Village is just round the corner,
the other side of Minto Hill,
so the agriculture we brought to Hassendean Station.
But despite most of the station's business being farm-related,
there was the occasional VIP traveller.
I've got a cutting of when Princess Margaret came through here
in the early '50s, about 1954, I think,
and she was met by the son of the Earl and Countess of Minto.
That's him there, is it? That's him there, that's the son, and that's obviously Princess Margaret...
Indeed. ..and she was quite a regular visitor at the Minto estate.
Very nice. Bit of country pursuits.
There is a very strong movement to extend the line even further,
from Tweedbank right through here.
What would that mean for you?
It'd mess up the garden, seriously, but...
THEY LAUGH Quite frankly, it should come back.
It should never have gone in the first place. You think? No, no, no.
So you might be able to keep your house,
just maybe not your garden. SIMON LAUGHS
Keep the house and watch the trains.
Oh, blissful.
Coming up, I find the centre of the world's cashmere industry...
You can hear it, you can smell it!
..and see how the railway created
one of the Great War's biggest prisoner-of-war camps.
The camp just unfolds in front of you. Oh!
There's miles and miles of countryside behind me,
but not here. I've reached the town of Hawick.
Following the old Waverley Route,
I'm reaching the halfway point between Edinburgh and Carlisle.
Great railway connections helped turn Hawick
into the largest town in the Scottish borders -
that and a very special local industry.
Way back in the 1600s,
there would have been folk here producing cloth and clothing
from the rough local wool.
Two centuries later,
that cottage industry had turned into 50 textile mills
on the banks of the River Teviot.
And, from 1862,
the Waverley Route was bringing in thousands of tonnes of coal
to keep the steam-powered factories working.
It also carried Hawick's famous raw material,
cashmere, a luxury wool brought all the way from Mongolia.
Believe it or not, Hollywood A-listers like Grace Kelly
wore jumpers and cardigans made in mills just like this one.
This used to be the home of Pringle.
In the '50s and '60s, Hawick fashion dressed the rich and famous,
but most of that industry has now left town.
Pringle became known as a golf brand
and is now thousands of miles away - under Chinese ownership.
But there are still cashmere mills in town
and the small independent producers left have stayed true
to Hawick's tradition of producing the finest knitwear available.
Hello. Hiya.
I'm here to see Jerry, is he about at all?
I'll just go and get him for you. Thanks very much.
Can I have a little mooch, whilst...?
Yes, you can, no problem. Thank you.
This site can trace it's cashmere-producing
origins back to 1874.
It's all very nice, very tactile.
It might surprise you that I'm not actually that used to
spending time in luxury fashion retail outlets like this...
..but I kinda like it.
Jerry Graham, meanwhile, has worked in this industry since he was 15.
Can I ask how much one of these sweaters might go for?
Well, if you'd like to spend anything from about £200, £300,
up about £1,500, £2,000, if you wish.
Ah! I'll tell you straight away, Jerry,
this sweater I'm wearing now cost nowhere near that, but...
Yeah, go on. Yeah. I can tell!
..but I guess it comes back to the old adage, right?
You get what you pay for. That's correct, yes.
This company only has a few outlets
and they're all in top-end locations around the world.
But there's only one where you can step backstage
and see the mill itself.
There's a lovely change in tone back here.
You can hear it, you can smell it.
The buzz. There's something happening back here, it is exciting.
What have we got here? This is the yarn, the raw yarn that comes in.
This is cashmere. OK.
This comes from goats in Outer Mongolia,
which is where you get the best quality.
It's lovely and soft, that. Yep.
Each cone comes in at about 2.5 kilos in weight
and the yarn costs about £150 to £180 per kilo,
so you can just imagine the value.
The value of that box, there? Alone, yes.
With an average man's sweater needing three miles of yarn,
you can see how the costs in cashmere alone stack up.
Right, Rob, this is the new technology
for the garments that are all knitted in one piece.
You'll probably... Your granny will probably remember knitting
a garment - a front, a back, and two sleeves.
Yeah, patterns! You followed patterns. Yeah, but here
they're all knitted in one piece,
so there's no seams at all in the garment.
It all comes out in one.
What? But surely there's a front and then a back,
and then they go together? It's all one piece. The whole thing?
The whole thing comes out in one, I'll show you after.
This has come out of one of these machines?
This is coming from that machine there, yeah.
There's no seams or stitching. No, not a thing.
That's just patterning... That's patterning to make it...
Well, it is fully fashioned.
It's fully fashioned knitwear.
On that one there's a collar attached as well.
You could almost wear that now.
There are 24 of these machines at the Hawico mill.
Details like buttons and pockets still need to be added by hand,
and, between them, they produce 60,000 garments a year.
How important was the railway to the industry here?
There used to be a train came through from Edinburgh to London
at night-time,
and a lot of the factories would put their merchandise on that train
and it would be arriving in London the next day. Wow.
Thank you so much for showing me around. No problem.
I better do something about this sweater, eh? Good idea.
Leaving Hawick, trains on the Waverley Route
now entered the remotest stretch of the line.
For almost 20 miles,
the railway beat a path through hills to the border with England.
And it's here that the most intriguing
Waverley Route story can be found.
I know there's a station near here somewhere,
just need to try and get back up on the line here.
Let's try up there.
In the midst of this wilderness,
a Borders estate called Stobs had a lonely station.
Ah, here we go.
So this is Stobs station, the old Stobs station.
I'm right back on the line here now.
Look, there's the platforms on each side.
This is absolutely lovely.
The station in complete disrepair,
there's been no refurbishment gone on here.
It's a real relic of the old Waverley line.
It's really lovely seeing some of this old station infrastructure
in place still, this broken-down old bridge.
Just listen to that. BIRDS TWEETING
Almost silence.
It's yet another station along the Waverley line
that's seemingly in the middle of nowhere,
but, as I understand,
this station had a huge historical significance to the area.
The landscape here changed in 1902,
when the government purchased 3,500 acres
as a training base for the British Army.
But when the Great War started the following decade,
the training gave way to imprisonment.
Hello. Hi.
Ian, is it? Hi, Rob.
Welcome to Stobs. Thank you very much!
It's a little nippy up here. And a bit bleak.
From 1914, thousands of German prisoners were brought here -
to what became one of the largest prisoner-of-war camps
of the First World War.
This is quite a reveal, isn't it?
You just come over the hillside here and the camp just unfolds in front of you. Oh.
Even though there's not much ahead of us here,
it's quite clear there was something quite big here at some point. Yep.
We're looking across at the hillside there.
The main features we can see and the most important one is
a surviving example of a First World War prisoner-of-war hut.
If you imagine, there was a total of 80 huts
stretching right across the hillside,
housing up to 5,000 prisoners of war.
Wow. Gives you an idea of the scale.
Here, in total isolation,
such a massive population could be hidden away,
with virtually no chance of escape.
But it was the proximity of the railway that made it possible,
with thousands arriving by train
to be marched the short distance from Stobs station.
We believe that this building is the camp post office
and one of the features that identifies it
is the telegraph pole that we can see on top.
Just on the end here? Just on the end here.
So even a prisoner-of-war camp had communication to the outside world?
They were allowed to send quite a few postcards and letters a week
back to their family and friends in Germany.
They had gymnastic clubs, they had craftwork, they had a library,
a camp orchestra, they also had dramatic plays and musical events.
Inside the camp, at least, prisoners enjoyed relative freedom.
Streets were named after their military leaders
and the German Kaiser's birthday was celebrated.
And here we have a very interesting article here,
which is a certificate for a sports fest
that was actually held within the camp.
Here we are. "Sportfest."
Got a very nicely hand-drawn certificate. Wow!
This we know was produced here, at Stobs Camp?
And produced by the prisoners in the camp.
Sounds like it was run almost like a small town.
Just about, yeah. It covered all aspects of life.
In the war's early stages,
most of the prisoners at Stobs Camp were German civilians,
guilty of nothing more than living in Britain
as the two countries went to war.
But, as fighting intensified,
soldiers captured right across the world were brought here,
to the borders, to the spend the rest of the war at Stobs.
George Stalman was a sailor on the Gneisenau
that was sunk at the Battle of the Falklands in 1914,
and he was brought back to Britain, to Stobs,
and this is a letter sent back to his brother.
"My dear Hans,
"I would have written to you earlier if we had full freedom of writing,
"but in this limited operation it is not possible.
"Now it's your 20th birthday.
Maybe you are still at home, maybe you are in the Kaiser's rock."
That was a slang for Kaiser's uniform.
"Should that be the case, then you must too soon go out to defend your dear Fatherland."
So even here he was still quite patriotic.
Oh, wow. So these are the bits that have all just been scribbled out
and that would have been done by the British. By the British censors.
If they've allowed that part,
just wonder what was written there that they've scored it out.
That's an interesting part. I would love to know.
We know some prisoners of war were held here during the Second World War,
when Stobs was also being used as a secret training base
for operations like D-Day.
Ian and his team hope to investigate the events of the 1940s soon
and reveal more secrets of this remarkable site.
Coming up...
One, two, three and you lift.
..I meet the team who've built a railway by hand...
It's all manhandled and it weighs a tonne.
..and I cross the border...
Now I'm in England!
..to reach the end of the Waverley Route at Carlisle Station.
What a magnificent structure it is.
Edinburgh to Carlisle,
I'm exploring the railway line that once crossed the Scottish Borders.
11 miles from England,
I'm reaching the highest spot on the old Waverley Route.
Whitrope Summit is brilliantly isolated,
but there's a platform,
several carriages, and even the odd locomotive.
It's the home of the Waverley Route Heritage Association.
Hi! I'm Rob. Hello. Welcome to Whitrope Siding.
I'm Bill... Hello, Bill. ..and this is Jim.
Hi, Jim, how are you doing? Fine, thanks, Rob.
This is a very pleasant discovery,
to see that we've got some track and some locomotives here.
And are we, exactly, on the route of the old Waverley line here? Yes.
Where I'm standing, this is the upline, this is going up to London,
and that's the down line and you go to Edinburgh.
So why here? Why did you guys decide to set this up here?
There wasn't actually a station up here, ever? No.
The schoolchildren would get picked up on the goods train in the morning
and taken to Hawick High School...
..would stop and they'd have a little ladder
that you could just climb up and down.
I love that.
Bill, Jim and their friends so loved the old line
that they've done whatever they can to keep its memory alive...
..including the relaying of a very short section of track.
How easy was that to do? Not very!
MEN: One, two, three!
Rail by rail, weekend after weekend,
members of the association have been laying track since 2002.
So you were laying all this by hand, were you?
We had very little mechanical assistance.
We just got enough bodies.
If you got enough bodies, it was quite light.
MEN: One, two three! Easy!
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Each length of the track is 60 foot and it weighs a tonne.
So it's all manhandled - one, two, three and you lift.
I bet you felt that after a long day out here, didn't you? Aye. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
But, for the last seven years, the hard work has paid off
and the railway has been open to passengers
one weekend a month, from spring to autumn.
What are my chances of getting a little ride here today, do we think?
We'll take you down to the rail pass
and you can have a ride on the rail pass.
If we can do that, I'd love to.
At just 800 metres,
this may just be the shortest heritage line I've ever ridden on.
And, instead of steam,
the ride here is on board a wonderful 1980s experiment.
A British Rail rail bus.
We're in! And this is Alan, he's going to be driving. Hello, Alan!
I'm Rob. Pleased to meet you, Rob.
This is, quite literally, a bus adapted to run on rails.
In 1984, it could have been the future of rural railways.
Rail buses were cheap to build,
cheap to run,
and, just like a bus, the driver could also be the ticket inspector.
I just love watching what you're doing here.
It takes a few minutes for the pressure to build
before I can release the brake... Gotcha.
..and then we can move forward.
This is a diesel engine, then, are we in here? Yes, it is. Yes.
British Rail had plans to sell this prototype in Europe and America.
Here we go, we've got some movement on dials. It's beginning to come down now, yes.
That's pressure coming up, is it? Yep, this is it.
You'll hear a click...
AIR HISSES That's it. Oh, ho!
And here we go...
ENGINE RUMBLES
Give it some. Bit of traction.
Give it some muscle.
Problem was, rail buses were notoriously noisy and uncomfortable,
and this particular prototype remained one-of-a-kind.
And we're away.
We are climbing here, actually, aren't we? We are, yeah.
Up towards the summit. Yes, it's 175 here. Wow.
Alan, do you remember the old Waverley line railway?
Well, yes.
I was travelling on the train every day to Edinburgh from Hawick,
and my wife and I came back from our honeymoon
to find the notice of closure on the platform.
You are kidding? So you didn't know it was going to happen? No.
So you got quite upset then, I'd imagine. Well, I was.
Really spoilt things.
Alan's taking me all of 500 yards,
to the northern end of the restored track,
where the chaps are keen to show me
one of the Waverley Route's engineering landmarks.
I'm applying brakes now
to slow us down as we approach the tunnel, you see. Breeze in.
Now here we are. That's us.
So a short little trip, but a trip all the same. Yep.
HISS OF AIR
That puts the train brake on, so we're all right to move now.
We're safe? We're safe now. Can we jump down? Yes.
ROB GRUNTS
You need your porridge! I do need my porridge, too right!
Lacking a bit of strength!
We've come to take a look at the fourth longest tunnel in Scotland.
Back in the day,
passengers on the Waverley would have climbed in the darkness
for almost three-quarters of a mile
before emerging into the daylight here
to reach the highest point on the route.
All right, here we go!
This is the Whitrope Tunnel
and you had about 600 navvies working on this at one time.
When was this? In 1861 it was completed.
Just a huge about of work. Tremendous amount of work.
But, I mean, you can't get here without really noticing
that there's a lot of rock fall in there.
A lot! Yes. A lot, yeah.
That happened about three years ago.
It started, it was just a little bit,
and lately it's been coming down quicker -
and above there somewhere there's a stream.
You can just hear that, that continuous stream of water now.
It's going to get worse as it goes on
because there's no maintenance done to it since 1969.
So if the whole Waverley line
were to be reinstated, all the way down to Carlisle,
what would happen with stuff like here?
Solution to that one is to take the top off it
and then you've just got a... Deep cutting. ..a big deep cutting.
And so for you, personally, Alan,
if you could get the train from Hawick up to Edinburgh again,
I bet that would be a real bonus, wouldn't it? Oh, absolutely, yes.
I could get rid of the car now that
I had to buy all these years ago. HE LAUGHS
Folk like Alan still remember the fateful day in 1969
when the railway closed.
Trainloads of enthusiasts had come for weeks
to ride the line whilst they still could.
Meanwhile, the locals staged protests, building replica coffins,
one of which was sent by rail to the Minister of Transport in London.
The final train left Edinburgh at 9:56pm on the 5th of January.
Here, in Newcastleton,
the Reverend Maben got together some local parishioners.
They locked the level crossing gate shut and staged a sit-down protest
on the level crossing itself.
The police were unable to open the gates and quickly arrested the reverend.
The crowd only dispersed
once it was agreed that their vicar would be released.
And, that same day,
the track of the Waverley Route started to be removed.
There was to be no last-minute reprieve.
For me, like the railway, leaving Newcastleton means my route
across the Scottish Borders is almost complete.
It's not every day I get to walk across
a border between two countries.
Well, I am now because, according to my map here,
when I come across Kershope Burn,
I'm moving from Scotland into England, and here it is!
Here's the water.
I'm in Scotland...
..and now I'm in England!
Having crossed the border,
the Waverley Route headed almost due south,
with only one target remaining.
And just as it was then, Carlisle remains a major railway town.
And here we are!
At the southern terminus of the old Waverley Route,
Carlisle railway station.
What a magnificent structure it is!
At one point, in the mid-1800s,
seven different railway companies operated services through here.
Those that helped pay for the station's construction
got to have their plaque displayed above the entrance.
The interior is just as impressive.
Eight platforms in all - more than enough, you'd think,
for the reintroduction of the Waverley Route.
There were varied reasons
for the closure of the Waverley Route in 1969.
It was a fairly slow link,
through the sparsely-populated Scottish Borders,
but now, 50 years later, come and meet the people who live here.
Come and hear from them
the compelling reasons it should be reinstated
and you'd be hard-pushed to disagree.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media