YOUR headline doesn't quite give the full picture about the Borders Railway project which begins in earnest this week with the start of the actual work on the line ("Warning £350m rail link not economically viable", The Herald, March 2).

Yes, the costs have risen dramatically since this branch line was first proposed but that is much more about the airy-fairy costings written out on the back of an envelope by the previous Lib-Lab executive than by the SNP Scottish Government which had to re-cost and then carry out due diligence on the scheme.

That inevitably meant delay but it was surely better to get the sums right than carry on with a project which the former MSP Jeremy Purvis thought was wonderful but which didn't quite match the rhetoric.

The line was abandoned by a Labour Government in 1969 when Richard Marsh was the Transport Minister and as the Waverley Line which ran from Edinburgh to Carlisle became the only main line in Britain to close. The replacement was a great scheme to dual the A7 trunk road from the Edinburgh city by-pass to Hawick, or at least to Galashiels. That was abandoned by the Tories as soon as Margaret Thatcher came to power a decade later.

Since that time the Scottish Borders, the counties of Roxburgh, Peebles and Selkirk, have been ignored and largely cut-off from the rest of Scotland. I do believe there are politicians of every political persuasion who think Scotland stops and starts at the M8 and they forget there are hundreds of square miles between that road and the Border.

Nicholas Watson, the former councillor Robbie Dinwoodie spoke to, set up his Borders Party first as a campaign group to save Scott's country, the lands of Sir Walter Scott who sat as Sheriff in Selkirk and who stayed at Abbotsford.

Such is Mr Watson's love of the Border country that he got himself re-elected last May to help protect its natural beauty against any development including house building, railway re-opening or development of a proper roads network in the area which the railway needs to deliver passengers to its rail-head at Tweedbank.

He soon announced after that he was standing down so that he could move to the Lake District.

As he sits atop a hill tending his sheep and watches the Carlisle to Settle railway trains chuffing their way through Cumberland perhaps he will ponder the damage he and his one remaining councillor have inflicted in recent years over the development of the Scottish Borders, the lack of jobs as well as houses and the run down which started in the 1960s but still continues.

Of course the costs of the railway have risen (doesn't everything nowadays?) but the costs of not doing anything to provide a proper road and rail network in this beautiful part of Scotland between the Border and our capital city will be a whole lot greater.

Of course the Glasgow-centric politicos would rather see the money spent on a railway to their airport, and I wish them well with that line too, but we desperately need reconnection with Scotland down here in the Borders and we need it now. The extension to Carlisle can wait another five years along with the M7.

Kenneth Gunn,

10 Halliday's Park,

Selkirk.

ROBBIE Dinwoodie's gloomy report on the finances of the Borders rail project requires some comment.

First, he refers to a business consultancy report "before work starts on reinstating the line". Sorry, but the work has been going on for months.

Secondly, he writes of "failure of plans to build hundreds of houses along the route". I don't know what these plans were, but one has only to travel south of Newtongrange to see massive house-building, and I have always accepted that the substantial new commuting areas in Midlothian will be the biggest earner on the line.

Thirdly, he quotes only former Borders councillor Nicholas Watson who has been a consistent opponent of the reinstatement but has now departed for pastures new over the Border. The Scottish Borders Council has been fully behind the project.

Fourthly, am I not correct in recalling that every one of the re-opened branch lines in Scotland in recent years has exceeded forecast estimates of travellers on them?

Finally, the report appeared on the day after I had just given a television interview to be broadcast by BBC Scotland next month recalling the closure of the Waverley Edinburgh-Carlisle line in 1969. The real tragedy is that the Minister of Transport of the time ignored the study paid for by the then local councils urging retention of a branch line from Edinburgh to Hawick with unmanned halts which would have saved us the now admittedly high costs of reinstatement.

David Steel,

Ettrick Lodge, Selkirk.

Robbie Dinwoodie is quite right to challenge the economic viability of big transport projects but unfortunately he has the wrong target with the Borders Railway.

Railway projects in Scotland have constantly outperformed initial projections for passenger numbers; the Larkhall line was performing 53% ahead of projections in just two years while the Alloa line had passenger numbers almost 300% ahead of forecast within three years of opening.

Indeed this is the trend across the UK where passenger numbers on railways at 1.4 billion per annum are at their highest level since the Second World War.

In contrast car mileage is in decline, yet the Scottish Government continues to pour billions of pounds into new road schemes. This is against a background of demanding climate change targets which are not being met and a future where oil supplies will become more expensive and scarce until they become exhausted.

A more appropriate target to challenge might be the second Forth Road Bridge which we all now understand is not necessary as the existing bridge has been shown to be safe for many years to come –why no call for this massive project to be halted?

Paul Tetlaw,

Board member, Transform Scotland,

5 Rose Street, Edinburgh.