Riccarton Junction railway station

Riccarton Junction operated from 1862 to 1969 as both a railway station and a self-contained workers' settlement deep in the Scottish Borders — until a forestry road was cut in 1963, the community was entirely unreachable except by train, with every loaf of bread and sack of coal delivered by rail. When the Waverley Line closed in 1969, the settlement died with it: residents left and the buildings were almost entirely demolished in the following years. What remains today are scattered stone ruins, overgrown foundations, and two recently renovated school buildings — the sole restored structures in an otherwise vanished townscape. The site sits amid dense commercial forestry and is accessible only by rough track, making it an unusually melancholy destination for those drawn to industrial ghost sites and the history of rural railway communities.