 Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm on Transplenion Express Class 802, or they're marketed as the Nova 1. I'm on the east coast mainland, just left Dunbar, and I'm on my way to the newest railway station in Scotland, which is Reston. It opened on the 23rd of May 2022, which is one day before the Elizabeth Line, and I went to the Elizabeth Line on its opening date so have a look at the video now. It's now the 7th of June This is the earliest I've been able to make it up to this part of Scotland to come and see Scotland's newest station. So we're just travelling along, made to be able to make out the sea. I know the camera's going a bit out of focus in the background. The big landmark is one of my favorite on the whole east coast. Oh, hello, the Class 68, Nova 1, and some nuclear blast trains at Class 68, Nova 7. So, talking of my favorite landmark, which is just coming up behind these trees, it will reveal itself any moment behind these next lot of trees. That rather large building there, which is dodging in and out of focus, might seem better. We go past. This is annoying, isn't it? The camera's not picking up. Yeah, you can see there's a rather large building there. That is the tallest nuclear power station. It's a shame the camera's not focusing on the delegate. But anyway, the tallest nuclear power station is over there, and I always enjoy passing it whenever I travel on the east coast mainland. It's just something I like looking out for, because I think nuclear power stations are fascinating. And they're one of my favorite things. It probably is supplying some of the electricity for the east coast main line. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to continue the journey along the coaches. It disappears even more behind, in a similar way, how it's been disappearing on screen. We're going to continue on to Reston. We're going to get out there and have a look around. But there's the east coast just over there. We'll shortly be arriving at Reston. I'm at Reston. We just watched the train go out and then the LUMO 803-001 went past. I can just see there's a bus pulling into the station. So we're going to have a little look around. The vision is obviously served by buses, not just trains, because this village is very small, as you can see. It's only a village of 450 people. So to start off, I was like, well, how on earth did they manage to get a new station? Usually when new stations open, a settlement where the railway passes through, they're usually small towns, or there's been a couple of larger towns like Kenilworth and Ilkston, which have railways passing through. We didn't have a station, thankfully, they now have. But here we're at a really small village. The nearest town is Eyemouth, which did once have, well, further up a couple of miles up that way, there was a junction and a branch up to the coastal town of Eyemouth. Now Reston did used to be a junction. The original station was down there. So what we're going to do, we're going to have a little look around this current station and then we'll go and have a look at the site, the old station. So this village would have been, is now in the Scottish borders. So I believe it used to be in the historical Scottish county of Berwickshire. Now, as I've been up in Scotland for work this week, I have a suitcase with me. So I'm kind of slightly restricted as to where I can go, but I could carry it up and down the steps, but I'm going to make use of the fact that the station is completely step three, which most modern railway stations are. I tell you one interesting thing about this station, as we sort of look around, it's a Scotrail station, but no Scotrail train stopped here. Now while we're here, so there's the platform there, you can see, I reckon this lift also goes down to the entrance and then you can see there's a set of steps that way and then the footbridge goes over. So if you would use this lift, if you were going to any of the platforms. So what we'll do, we'll go up and over to the other side first. We'll have a good look around and then we'll go down and out. You can just see the station. You can see people are already using it. There's cars parked there and the bus came in. The bus seemed to arrive just after I did, so it must be time to meet the trains. So here's the street level, platform level, footbridge level. We're going to the footbridge. Just go up and then we'll see. So it's quite an interesting design, this footbridge, because the bridge is sort of, it's not sort of square with right angles. The steps go at the angles which we're about to see. So here we are, we are now on the footbridge. So what I'll say about the steps is, if you have a look here, quite good actually. Look, you can see it's glass. So you can watch trains quite nicely from here. See how the steps go down an angle. I'm not sure if this is fairly safe there. I'm not going to go down, but see how you kind of come down here. Then you've got your lift tower there and then that would go down to the station. I reckon this is for, there was a lot of people. It just sort of improves the flow of passengers, if there was say a big crowd, to sort of walk at, not have to walk at right angle. Then interestingly, I'm going to grab my suitcase. The next lift there is at an angle. That lift is straight, but this lift is, is sort of angled with, so it's like in line with the steps to go down. So you get to here and the steps go down. See what, let's have a look from this side of the bridge, what's over that side. So there's not a lot here. There's not really much village on that side though. They seem to have built a new path all along. Yeah, I wonder where that goes. Just up there, there was a site, the old railway station. Curving off that way would have been the railway to some Oswells on the Waverley route. I like this stone cladding. This is real stone. It's not like some plastic or something. Stone cladding or, yeah, to cover the lift. So let's go down to the platform. It seems very pleasant here. Looking forward to having a little look around the village once we get out the station. Comes a lift. Nice if some interesting trains came through. The interesting thing I did notice was that, oh, and then the lift doors come in here, come out there. The train I came in, although it was a trans-penner and I said about the electricity from Tornish nuclear power station, Powering East Coast Maina. Well, it was running on diesel mode. And I seem to remember hearing something that the Trans-Pennine 802s do run on diesel mode on East Coast Maina. I'm not sure why, if you know. Comment and say why. But the Lumeau that went through, they're only electric, they don't have a diesel engine. So that would definitely be running on electricity. Here we go, we're going out onto the platform. Doors closing. They get out full doors closed. So yeah, this is platform two. So this is, well, I'll call it the down platform because it's down going away from London, although we're in Scotland. So, but I still think the East Coast Main Line sort of revolves around London. So it's down, this is the down platform. That's the up platform. So I don't know if there's any more trains coming. I expect there will be some soon. I think I'll do. We'll walk down to the end of the platform down this end and then we can sort of see the station building behind us and then we'll go and have a look around the village. I've got an hour here. So it's good to see a new station. I haven't even said it's like the village is small. It must be really useful if you live in a small village because not many villages, 450 people with a railway running through them would get their station reopened. So they're quite lucky in that respect. The other next new station, I think to appear on this line will be East Linton, which is further towards Edinburgh. As I pass through, I could see construction work had started there. So I suppose I will come back and visit that one now. I just want to see if this is actually a way out or is it some sort of fire exit. It gets down here. It does look like it might be closed. Get to here and let's just have a look. Yeah, there's some, I'm not going to go down there, but it's, I reckon it's a fire exit and that'll take you out. That might be a public right away. I don't know, but we probably won't have time to do that. But there we go. You get a view looking down towards the station and the footbridge. So as I said, no Scotrail train stop here. You've got mainly Transpennine trains and a couple of LNER trains stop there. Same as with Dunbar that no Scotrail train stop there, although a few cross-country trains also stop at Dunbar. So it's a bit strange that you've got these, because most of the Scotrail stations on the East Coast mainline East of Edinburgh are served by the North Berwick trains, but North Berwick line branches off before Dunbar. So that's why they've got no trains that stop there. So it's managed by Scotrail, but served by other companies. There's only about two LNER trains that stop here, but if you have a look, it has got the information if you're traveling and then on the R train where to stand for which carriages. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to leave the station and we'll go and have a look around the village. I'm back up on the footbridge now. We're now going to make our way down and out of the station into the car park and then we'll see the village. So have a look from here. You can see where you can just see a church, whether it's still in use. That's the village church. You can just see if there's any pubs or cafes in the village and we'll just see what there is to see. Last time I did a seminar video like this was in December when they opened a new railway station at Soham. Again, that was a town that had a railway passing through, but no railway station. So they opened the new station at Soham. That's a much larger town. It's 10,000 people. So we had a look around the town, but we're in a much smaller place today because I've explained why it serves town of Alinworth. It's also got quite a large catchment area. So we're now going, oh, I'm not going to stop at the platform. Again, we're going right down to the ground or have a look at the front of the station. So it's always, I'm really pleased to see another station opened. It's always sort of exciting when a new station opens. I like to go and see the street level. Just see what there is really and have a look around these villages that or towns that haven't had a station all this time. So we come out here and it's clad different or got different type of stone work. And that's interesting. So that building must be the lift motor room there. And then the stone work goes to this other tree, which looks like some sort of chimney, but isn't it? It's just lift shaft. So it doesn't look like there's a ticket office here, but there's a ticket machine. So this kind of area here is the main sort of front of the station. Empty bike rack. There's, that's funny that you've got, see, these are disabled spaces, but they've actually, instead of painting it on, they've actually made the disabled sign in brick, which I think it's called. It almost looks like a Lego disabled symbol that you have a look around at the whole station there. You've got various electric car charging. There's a smell of, you know, like bark mulch because you can see those various gardeners over there. They're planting trees, but look, there's a hedge and graph around there. And that noise you can hear, sounds like they're driving fence posts into the ground somewhere. So, you know, it's kind of like, it's in its early stages. If we come in a year's time or so, it'll probably all look a bit different. So if ever did want to build a ticket office, maybe they would have one here, but somehow don't think they will. And what's that? Yeah, next train is the 1553, it's a Beric on Tweed. That is my train. So that's the Trans-Pennine. It's funny really, because it's not really Trans-Pennine at all. Trans-Pennine have kind of grown quite a lot when they first started. They were just, they used to use 1558s and they literally did go like from Manchester to York and that. They trans, they went across the Pennines, but now they go all the way up to Scotland, which is, you can understand more like if you get the Scotland some Manchester airport ones, they still, you know, Trans-Pennine, but they seem to operate all these other slightly more local services. But anyway, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying it's, seems a funny name for, they seem to have really expanded beyond Trans-Pennine. And what's going to happen here? There's, I don't know if I can park the car park. It's always quite exciting when you come to new stations. They usually, the station might be all ready to take passengers, but the rest of the year round, it's not quite finished. It's what I'm going to do now. I'm going to walk up to where the old station used to be, which I believe is just up there. We'll have to put the village on the way. So from the station, lift towers in the background, you can see they're putting this fence up there. That was the, that machine there was what was hammering we could hear. And that gentleman there in the high viz, he's pulling out the wire for the fence now. There's a good information board here, Reston Village. It has a really nice map of the village. It shows you where the station used to be. There's actually some old pictures of the station. And it mentions station history. It says 2019 to 2024. Reston Railway Station hopefully reopened. Well, here we are in 2022. It has reopened. So there's various, so when, you know, very explaining as to when the station did open, the line opened on the 18th of June, 1846. Eventually the branch line over to Duns and some Boswells was added. The line to St Duns closed in 1951. I'm just reading this off here. I was going to learn in my head, but I can just read it. And then in 1964 and May, unfortunately the station closed. And then here we are. It's back again. So what I'm going to do, I'm tempted to go down there, down this alleyway and find the river Ima. The rest of the village is that way. There's also, I was just talking to a local gentleman, there's a shop and post office down there, but there's not actually any cafes or pubs in the village. So I'm going to explore now down this alleyway. This path was not made for suitcases. So what I'm going to do, I wouldn't normally do is I'm going to leave the suitcase there and we'll just walk quickly to the bridge to look at the eye water. So the eye water is closed out to sea at Ima, hence the name of the town. Let's just have a look down here, which is pleasant. I wish I had longer and I kind of can't really take my eyes off my suitcase, but it does look very nice here. That must be the A1 over there at Busy Road. So it feels really sort of nice and out in the countryside and I'm only, you know, three minutes walk away from the railway station. This is the eye water. I'm going to head back now to the village and have a look around up there. That's the local parish church. It appears it is still in use as a church. I'm just now walking up the main street of the village. Well, there's only really one through street in this village. There's a road junction up here with a dead-end road, which I expect goes to the old railway station. I think this building here might have once been a pub looking at it. If it were that hanging out, it looks like that would have once supported a pub sign. I'm going to cross over and get you to church there, or the Kirk, as I should say, since I'm in Scotland. So the eye water is just down there between here and that field. We're going to go and find the old railway station as if there's anything left of it. So as I mentioned, the new station is on a different site. Quite sensible, really, that they've recited the new railway station because this one's probably a bit kind of restricted, and it would have also meant moving houses or demolishing houses. So an empty field. Well, look at this little dead-end road here. It says Station Park under some poppies. So I think we'll walk up this little dead-end road here. This is taking us to where the railway station used to be. It's a bit interesting to see what we find. I can already see a building ahead of me, that one there, which I think might be possibly part of the old, it's either the old railway station or it's a ticket office of some kind, maybe. We'll just have to see what we can see when we get here. It's now a network rail access point. So that might be the old station building. It's a dead-end road. Get to here. It says here. Oh, you look rest and old station. So that's the location. It's like a little network rail yard. It was possibly like a foreman's office for the good yard there once, and then what is now a private house. That was either the station most of this house, or maybe it was the old railway station. Somewhere just over there would have been the junction for the lighters and Boswells, and you may just be able to see over there the railway station. I'm going to head back into the village now. I'm just making my way up now to the top of the slope where the road goes over the railway. There's the old water down there in the valley. The old station would have been just down there, although we've already found you've accessed it from the other road, but you've got a better view from here. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to park my suitcase there. We can have a look at the railway. So that way is looking towards Edinburgh, and if we go across here, we should not only be able to see the new station, we should be looking directly down the site of the old. Yes, so not really a lot left, no platforms or anything. You can see the new station in distance. The line to St Boswells would have gone off over there. So if we go to the end of this, um, off the bridge, look across the field, you can just see a low embankment running across there. Nice old line to St Boswells on the Waverly route, the section that hasn't yet reopened. That's re-opened now as far as Tweed Bank. Hopefully one day it'll be extended to Hoike and eventually Kala, but we don't know. I'm now going to make my way back to the railway station and catch a train back down to London. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you very much for watching. Please do feel free to like, subscribe, and comment. And from the bridge, overlooking the site of the old and the new railway station at Reston. Goodbye.