A question that often arises when looking at the empty roadbed of a vanished railway is,
why was the railway built in the first place and why that line?

The Gifford and Garvald Light Railway is one such case.
The route taken serves rural parishes of very low densities of population
with little or no economic mineral resources.
Furthermore, the great sweep southwards over the River Humble takes the railway further
away from other small settlements that exist in the area, like East and West Saltoun.

This is compounded by the obvious failure to go by the shortest route and one which was easier topographically.
The route taken offered more physical difficulties, with consequently greater costs of construction, and so
gave the line sharp curves and steep gradients that are anathema to normal railway practice.
J. R. Kellett has suggested that the underlying pattern formed by units of land ownership is one of the
critical factors in explaining the routes followed by the railway builders.
Could this explain some of the idiosyncrasies of the Gifford and Garvald Railway?


When the routes for main lines were chosen, the wishes of intermediate communities had often to be ignored or,
at least, placated with the provision of a branch. This was the case in East Lothian, where even
the county town had to make do with a branch. To give the main line effective penetration, in an age when
the horse-drawn vehicle was the only alternative, it was necessary to create a rural network.
Indeed from the very beginning there was a built-in element of cross-subsidisation.

There was an hierarchical structure of transport with the main line relying on the branch,
which in turn, depended on the gig and cart.
Only with the development of the internal combustion engine and efficient road transport
did the whole structure collapse.

That part of East Lothian lying to the southeast of the coalfield, comprising the parishes of Pencaitland,  Saltoun,
Bolton, Yester, and Garvald and Bara, encompassed agricultural land's of considerable importance.
It was here that Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun introduced the barley-mill, John, Marquess of Tweeddale and
Sir George Suttie pioneered turnip husbandry, William Cockburn of Ormiston lovingly created a model estate,
and a later Marquess of Tweeddale developed a machine for forming tiles for drainage purposes.

Yet it remained inadequately served by transport right down to the end of the nineteenth century.
The turnpike road, built in the middle of the eighteenth century, took a line well north of the parishes and,
when the North British Railway was completed in 1846, its route lay further north still.
It was in the light of this isolation that the major landowners of the area set out to promote
a branch line to serve their interests.


The Coming of the Railways in East Lothian

The railway age came to East Lothian with the North British Railway Act of 19 July 1844,
which authorised the building of a trunk route from Edinburgh to Berwick.
At the same time a branch was authorised from Longniddry to Haddington.
Both branch and main line were brought into operation on 22 June 1846.
It was proposed to extend this branch for rather more than a mile to bring it nearer to the town of Haddington,
where it was to join the proposed East Lothian Central Railway, which was to run from the
North British Railway's main line at East Linton up the valley of the Tyne
for some twelve milesthrough Haddington and on to Ormiston.

These lines were authorised in 1847, but both schemes collapsed in the financial crash
that followed the Railway Mania, and neither was revived.
The populace was not completely isolated prior to the arrival of the, railway at Gifford,
for a daily coach service left at 08.00, 13.00, 15.30 and 18.00, taking 45 minutes to reach
Haddington in order to make connections with the North British trains, the journey
to Edinburgh taking in all 1 hour and 53 minutes.


The Promoters

The Gifford and Garvald Railway was no exception to the rule that Scottish railways had the
enthusiastic support of the majority of landed proprietors.
Indeed, most of the land required for the route was owned by the promoters.
One does not have to look far to find the source of their enthusiasm: isolation would be removed;
rich urban markets would be opened up for farm produce minerals would gain access to vastly increased markets;
and in addition their own needs would be more easily procured.

William, Marquess of Tweeddale, John Fletcher of Saltoun, Walter Gray of Nunraw and
William Trevelyan of Tyneholm were the main promoters of the Bill to provide for a railway to
extend for twelve miles from a junction with the Macmerry branch of the North British Railway at Ormiston,
terminating near Tanderlane farm in the parish of Garvald and Bara.

With the exception of William, 10th Marquess of Tweeddale (1826-1911), none of these gentlemen seems to
have had any experience in the railway world. Tweeddale, however, was well versed in railway politics,
for he was not only a longstanding director of the North British, but its chairman from 1890 to 1899.
At first his support for the proposed line stemmed from his landed interests and he was quite happy
to share the enthusiasms of his fellow landowners.

Yet from the very beginning the North British looked on the new project with more than a benevolent eye.
On 6 August 1890 a meeting was held within the North British Company's offices by the principal landowners interested
in the line, in order to appoint an influential committee to promote a bill in the ensuing session of Parliament.

As we shall see later, by the time the Act was passed the two parties had entered into a working agreement.