1968 by a Hawick housewife, Madge Elliot, accompanied by David Steel and the Earl of Dalkeith, MP for Edinburgh North, was to no avail. The line closed on Monday 6 January 1969, one of 37 lines closed by Marsh during his 18-month term of office. It was the largest railway closure in the United Kingdom until the closure of the Great Central Main Line a few months later. The demise of the Waverley Route contrasts with the outcome of the proposal to close the Llanelli-Craven Arms line which was considered in Summer 1969. In both cases, patronage had declined and closure would result in a large area left without rail transport. However, the decisive difference which ensured the survival of the Welsh line was the number of marginal Labour constituencies through which it ran, a fact exploited to great effect by George Thomas, Secretary of State for Wales, in his successful defence of the line. Last trains Saturday 4 January 1969 was the last busy day of operations on the line; British Rail ran a special train entitled Farewell to the Waverley Route hauled by Class 47 D1974 and carrying 411 passengers in nine coaches. The train, which rail campaigners had urged supporters to boycott, was stopped at Millerhill shortly after leaving Edinburgh while four policemen and three bomb-disposal experts boarded it. An anonymous telephone call had been made to the police that a bomb was on board, but nothing was found. Arriving late in Hawick, the train was met by hundreds of placard-bearing protestors and large numbers of policemen. The crowds were led by a group carrying a black coffin bearing a wreath and the words "Waverley Line, Born 1848, Killed 1969". Madge Elliot, a local housewife who had spearheaded the campaign to save the line, was warned by police not carry out her plan to hold a sit-in with protestors on the permanent way, and instead she distributed leaflets edged with the words "It's quicker by hearse". Meanwhile, the last freight trains to traverse the line came through: the 8:30am Carlisle-Millerhill (4S42) and the 9:55am Bathgate-Kings Norton empty car flats (3M45), which were respectively hauled by Type 3 and 4 diesels. The day also saw a second special – an 11-coach train from Newcastle worked by Deltic D9002 The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and the last through goods services. The last southbound stopping service from Hawick left