Scotland’s Railways · line explorer
The Waverley Route
Edinburgh Waverley to Carlisle Citadel
Everything about the Waverley Route
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Adverts, posters & visual culture · 1923
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1935The Silver Jubilee
1923Farrah's grocery shop advertisement
Second World WarWartime glamour and cigarette promotion
1921Harvey Nichols fashion advertisement
1924What's Become of the ‘Homely’ Girl?
1922Holeproof Hosiery illustration
1927Elizabeth Arden cosmetics
1941Women of Britain — Come into the Factories
Second World WarOperation Pied Piper evacuation poster
c. 1925Order this large Guinness for the home
1928Spirit of Haig — Great Scot!
1919Tabu and the modern smoking woman
1943At War Against the Axis
1927The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
1930Juno and the Paycock
1930Wellcome Insulin
1930sKeep Your Hands Soft & White with Zam-Buk
1935Écosse — Black Watch Pipers
1928The Forth Bridge
1928Over the Forth to the North
c. 1930Fraserburgh
c. 1930St Andrews — Golf
c. 1926Bridlington
1925Filey — For the Family
1939Camping Coaches in England and Scotland
1929Munich and Central Europe
1925Harwich–Antwerp
1928Easy Virtue
1926The Mountain Eagle
1929The Manxman
1928 film; 1929 posterWeekend Wives
1929Chesterfield Cigarettes
1930sCape Town to London — Imperial Airways
1930sSwitzerland by Imperial Airways
c. 1931RMS Empress of Britain — Canadian PacificThe line at a glance
A railway across the Borders
From the heart of Edinburgh to Carlisle Citadel: towns, industries and isolated railway communities joined by one remarkable main line.
Through route completed
1 July 1862The Hawick-Carlisle completion created the full Edinburgh-Carlisle route.Historic length
98 miles 20 chainsThe 98¼-mile Edinburgh-Carlisle Waverley Route.1964 express journey
2 hr 28–33 minThe Waverley took 2 hours 28 minutes southbound from Edinburgh to Carlisle and 2 hours 33 minutes northbound.1964 local journey
3 hr 5–14 minThe transcribed local workings took 3 hours 14 minutes southbound and 3 hours 5 minutes northbound.1964 evidence view
23 stationsPassenger stations represented in the present route dataset.Through closure
6 January 1969Regular through passenger services ended.Passenger railway today
Edinburgh-TweedbankThe 30-mile Borders Railway has ten stations and seven newly built stations.Services returned
6 September 2015Regular passenger services began between Edinburgh and Tweedbank.
The Waverley Route linked Edinburgh Waverley with Carlisle through Midlothian, the Scottish Borders and the northern edge of Cumbria. Explore its places, changing railway, timetables, photographs and the people whose lives were bound up with the line.
Why the Waverley mattered
A national route and a Borders railway
The Waverley was one of the principal Anglo-Scottish railway corridors. It carried through passengers and freight between Edinburgh and Carlisle while giving the Borders textile towns, market communities and isolated railway settlements a direct connection to larger cities and markets. Closure therefore removed both a national through route and the railway that bound many communities along the corridor together.
Don’t just read about the railway. Choose a chapter above to follow its geography, watch its story unfold, inspect the trains that called, meet its people or open the visual archive.