More than half a century without passenger trains may have cost Hawick around £4.7m in local economic output, according to new analysis by World of Railways.
Hawick station closed on 6 January 1969 when the Waverley Route between Edinburgh and Carlisle shut to passengers.
Rail returned to part of the Scottish Borders in 2015, when the line from Edinburgh reopened as far as Tweedbank, but Hawick remained just beyond it.
Now the possibility of improving transport links between Tweedbank, Hawick and Carlisle is being examined through a formal business case process.
Against that backdrop, World of Railways has estimated what the decades without direct passenger rail may have meant for Hawick.
Its working figure is approximately £4.68m between 1969 and 2025.
Emily Warner, at World of Railways, said: “Hawick didn’t just lose a station; It lost its place on a railway connecting Edinburgh and Carlisle. What is very interesting now is that this isn’t only a historical debate. There is active work looking at whether the Borders Railway should continue south through Hawick.”
The investigation is part of World of Railways: Britain’s Lost Railways project ahead of The National Festival of Railway Modelling, at the NEC Birmingham on 21 and 22 November 2026.
