Waverley Line

Early years

The completion of the Border Union Railway was an unwelcome development for the West Coast partnership set up by the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR), the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway and the Caledonian Railway, which had dominated the joint station at Carlisle Citadel and the profitable Anglo-Scottish traffic which passed through it. By 1860, the traffic was generating more than £1,500,000 for the partnership; this represented more than two-thirds of its income. To protect their interests, the companies concluded a secret agreement to deny a share of the Carlisle traffic to the newcomer by providing that traffic from the south for Edinburgh had to be sent via the Caledonian main line unless specifically consigned to the NBR's Waverley line. This proved so effective that locomotive parts ordered by the NBR from the Midlands reached the company's St Margarets works in Edinburgh via the Caledonian. Nevertheless, the NBR did make some inroads into the partnership's traffic, and the Edinburgh-London goods traffic carried over the East Coast line declined from 4,045 tonnes in 1861 to 624 tonnes in 1863.