Peebles Railway

The Peebles Railway was a railway company that built a line connecting the town of Peebles in Peeblesshire, Scotland, with Edinburgh. It opened on 4 July 1855, and it worked its own trains.

The friendly North British Railway later promoted a line, at first identified as the Galashiels, Innerleithen and Peebles Railway, from Peebles to Galashiels, making a connection with the Peebles Railway there, and also with the Caledonian Railway which had its own line at Peebles. The GI&PR line was built by the North British Railway and opened on 1 October 1864.

In 1860 the Peebles Railway company leased its line to the North British Railway, which operated the Galashiels and Edinburgh sections as a continuous through route.

Road transport of goods and passengers provided fierce competition in the 1950s and the line closed in 1962. No railway use is now made of the former lines.

In the eighteenth century Peebles had become an important manufacturing town, chiefly for woollen weaving and also the preparation of cotton and linen products, and also brewing. Its location on the banks of the Upper River Tweed put it on the communication routes of the area, constrained by the hills north and south surrounding Windlestraw Law and Dollar Law respectively.

When the turnpikes were introduced, Peebles was within five hours of Edinburgh by post-chaise. In 1807 Thomas Telford was commissioned to design a double-track waggonway connecting Glasgow and Berwick, a distance of 125 miles (201 km), running through Carluke, Peebles and Melrose. The waggonway would have been horse-operated, and was intended to form an outlet for iron products and lime to the borders area, and agricultural products, in particular grain, to the industrial towns of central Scotland.

The mountainous terrain of the route would have required steep gradients which would have been challenging for horse traction, and the estimated cost of construction was £365,000, a huge amount at that time, and the scheme was dropped.

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