THE Scottish Government is to be congratulated for delivering the new Borders railway which will resurrect 30 miles of the old Waverley Line connecting rural communities with Edinburgh.

The capital investment of £294m is forecast to generate £33m of benefits to the economy.

This puts into perspective the submission by the residents of Gilsland for an investment of less than one per cent of the above sum to reopen their station, which would surely have a proportional effect on the local economy on the English side of the Border.

Are there any grounds for optimism since Claire Perry, the junior minister for transport visited the village with Guy Opperman on February 17?

Unfortunately, I think not given that her boss Patrick McLoughlin has since “conceded that investment, vaunted as the biggest in the railways since Victorian times, was not after all going to deliver the projects promised in its £38.5bn five-year plan” ( Guardian , June 26).

It will not have escaped the attention of your eagle-eyed readers that no actual promise has ever been made to the long-suffering residents of the Gilsland area.

From my eyrie, only a mile above the Tyne Valley arterial transport axis, I can trace the line of the railway line, which runs by the undualled A69, along which the 30-year-old rolling stock will trundle through their village.

Maybe Steve Mason, Northumberland County Council’s new chief executive on his salary of £183,000 ( Hexham Courant, August 28) could intervene financially to aid the west of the county? (Surely on that sort of package he must surely pack some clout).

DAMIAN RUDGE

Thorngrafton