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The railway, in the form of a line from Edinburgh, arrived at a terminus in Hawick in 1849. In the ensuing years there was much argument as to the best option to turn the line into a through route. Within 20 years the line, via Whitrope summit rather than Langholm brought new prosperity to the Scottish borders, and served the communities along its route for a full century.
May 2002's conference from the Campaign for Borders Rail highlighted the potential of a renewed borders rail link to carry rail freight in addition to passenger trains - relieving the existing routes which are increasingly working at capacity. The conference was held in Hawick's town hall, behind which a lane runs up the hill to a steel overbridge which marks the route of the line across the hillside and through the town.
The reopening of the line has had so many false starts that it is difficult to believe that moves at the northern end in the form of the Waverley Railway Project of the route may lead once again to the through borders rail link that took almost 20 years to construct the first time round.
A characteristically sinuous portion of what was never a high speed line, the trackbed descends towards the town, beneath a backdrop of the hills of the Scottish borders, and the country towards the summit of the line at Whitrope.
A damp Friday evening with failing light, and this is the view of the town hall from the railway. Behind the camera, the trackbed continues to run, mostly undamaged and occasionally with crunchy ballast marked with sleeper impressions, on its shelf along the hillside before it turns to run through a short rock cutting before the void at the site of the Slitrig viaduct. Both viaducts in Hawick were demolished within a few years of the line closing. Slitrig viaduct is marked by short approach embankments, the base of a pier in the river, and a disintegrating weir that helped protect the structure from water erosion. (When the finance is sourced, replacement viaducts represent a simple engineering challenge - and it's not yet widely recognised that reinstating a dead railway can be rather easier than infrastructure works involving live ones ...)
In the photograph, the town hall's tower is prominent. The trackbed runs on a stone embankment here, crossing a minor road on an arch bridge, before passing beneath the steel bridge behind the town hall. The line is in use as a footpath for some way north of the steel bridge.
A structure which has survived and been maintained, this carried the line over one of the town's roads. Seen from the uphill side of the line.
The same bridge again, but seen from above the line, and looking south from the town.
The same location once more but viewed from a distance and from the old town.
A minor road climbs steeply behind the town hall to cross this bridge above the trackbed
The view south from the steel overbridge of the mown trackbed as it climbs away across the hillside through the town. The site of the Slitrig viaduct is almost in view - the structure was behind the shoulder of land in the middle distance.
In contrast, looking north, the railway's land is in use for storing building material. In the distance, the next structure, a steel underbridge with little headroom, has been removed, together with one abutment, and the line's embankment pared back.
The line's embankment has been removed here and part of the land in use for car parking. Beyond the abutment, the trackbed descends through a short cutting, much overgrown, and beneath a hump backed overbridge. The trackbed emerges from the cutting and the embankment beyond, leading to the site of the Teviot viaduct, has been removed.
Buses link Hawick with Edinburgh and Carlisle rail stations. This is a view uphill from the town centre bus stop, of an arch bridge carrying a minor road above the line. This being Hawick, the location of the main bus stops is given as 'Horse'.
Looking south from the Teviotdale leisure centre reveals the truncated embankment of the railway, in the middle distance beyond the recent road improvements to this part of Hawick. On the right is the new road bridge, a single span steel structure. The former bridge, now pedestrianised, is out of the photo to the right. The railway was carried on a substantial embankment towards the camera before swinging to the left, close to the riverside house, on a masonry viaduct across the river Teviot. The substantial tree, in leaf on the far side of the river is planted on the line of the railway, while the earth slipway into the river may mask stonework from a pier. The embankment's footprint is taken up by the annex to the supermarket's car park
Another view from alongside the leisure centre. Again the truncated embankment's end can be seen above the roundabout in the foreground. The line's route is then between the Safeway supermarket car park(glimpsed in the centre middleground), and the new road beyond the teviot bridge (both behind the landscaping trees). The trackbed - at this point airborne, then swung to the left, passing the riverside house, and then passed behind the present leisure centre. The teviotdale leisure centre was built on railway land, but between the sites of Hawick's original station and its replacement, dating from the line's reopening as a through route.
After this photograph was taken, a large timber wagon rounded the road junction - a reminder of the timber traffic carried on the roads of the Scottish Borders. A portion of this 900,000 tonnes per year travels north, while the rest travels south. Timber traffic would be one component of a revitalised rail link.
Between the leisure centre and the hillside is one of the platforms of Hawick's first station. The new through route diverged some hundreds of yards north of here to swing across the river - the land being now occupied by a portion of the centre's car park and an access road.
The platform's coping stones. If these are the original, they appear to have been adapted from the stone blocks that would once have carried a mineral tramway. If so, this isn't the only station whose platform edging pieces were of this origin. Some of the drilled holes still contain iron pins.
Travel on the rail link bus between Hawick and Carlisle and your journey will parallel the alternative route for the line, which was not built, but which would have run via Langholm. The village of Langholm was served by a branch from Riddings. This is a glimpse from the bus of the beautifully placed viaduct that carried the Langholm branch across the river, closing the view in a particularly fine way.
For the middle part of the bus journey from Hawick the Waverley route's trackbed is often visible to one side of the road. Not all steel structures have been removed - this is one of several substantial river bridges still to be found on the line.
Taking photos of the remains of a railway through any town is to portray the less attractive sights on offer. Hopefully though you can see enough of Hawick to reflect its attractions as well - its not bereft of those even on a rainy Friday night with starlings excreting in an insolent and dangerously random fashion onto the pavements of the rain-soaked high street - the town in its setting has much of interest, and the tree plantings of the nineteenth century beautify the urban hillsides and lead the eye to the country beyond.
I'd like to thank the library staff who supported a flying research visit in the hour available to me before the Carlisle bus departed ...
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All before you, in this world, is smoke and shadows.