History
The North British Railway Company was established in 1844 to build a railway from Edinburgh to Berwick-upon-Tweed, with a branch to Haddington. The line was completed in 1846, but a continuous rail connection between London and Edinburgh was not available until October 1848; the Caledonian having been able to offer a through service via Carstairs since March 1848 . The fastest trains between the two capitals then took slightly over 12 ½ hours (for both East Coast and West Coast routes), and the (cheaper) steamship service between Leith and London still took the bulk of the passenger traffic. The NBR had no running rights south of Berwick. Mineral traffic (in particular coal from the Lothian coalfield) was the largest source of revenue; an English shareholder blamed the low passenger revenue on the willingness of Scots to travel third-class even when they could afford better.
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“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Karl Marx (1818–1883)