PASSENGERS using the new Borders railway will be able to connect with early morning services direct to London.
Fares and times for services along the 30-mile Edinburgh to Tweedbank route have been unveiled for the first time, revealing that there will be two services an hour in each direction during peak times, with an hourly service on Sundays.
Trains will start on the Tweedbank-Edinburgh Waverley line from 5.20am, allowing passengers arriving in the capital at 6.15am to catch the 6.25am service to London King's Cross.
The latest train on the line will leave Waverley station at 11.55pm for a 00.52am arrival at Tweedbank.
The line also includes stops at Galashiels, Stow, Gorebridge, Newtongrange, Eskbank, Shawfair, Newcraighall and Brunstane.
The £350 million project is connecting the Borders to the capital for the first time in 40 years.
Transport Scotland said passengers would be able to travel end-to-end for less than £10.
Transport Minister Keith Brown said: "The Borders Railway will serve a huge cross section of society.
"Our fares structure and timetable will ensure that the train will be an attractive travel option."
It comes after previous criticism from campaigners that the Scottish Government had reneged on a promise to keep maximum journey times on the new route to 55 minutes.
In December, the Scottish Government said 98% of journeys would take less than an hour.
Tom Curry, vice chairman for Campaign for Borders Rail said: "The fare structure coupled with the half-hourly timetable will make the railway competitive with bus and car and will no doubt encourage a great number of people to switch to using the train."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article