I NOTE with interest the reopening of the Borders Railway (“History in the making as Borders Railway carries passengers again”, The Herald, September 7). When I was 11 or 12 in the late 1940ss my grandfather, who lived in Carlisle but had close connections with Edinburgh, used to take me and my cousins on an annual pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Zoo. We travelled on the old Waverley Line.

By that time many of the minor railway lines which had existed in the Borders had been closed (not by Beeching). As we approached St Boswells Station my grandfather would announce: “When I was a boy and stopped at this station the Station Master would call – ‘St Boswells. Change here for Jedburgh, Kelso, Berwick and Duns’.”

Arthur Robinson,

Waterbeck, Lockerbie.