The NER extracted a high price from the NBR in the form of running rights from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Edinburgh. These were fully exercised by the NER, thereby greatly reducing the influence of the Scottish company on the East Coast line. The Waverley Route spawned a series of branches serving the towns and villages in the Scottish Borders: a branch line from Kelso Junction near reached Kelso where it met an NER branch from . The NBR Chairman, Richard Hodgson, sought to link the Waverley Route with the Edinburgh-Berwick line between Ravenswood Junction, north of St Boswells, and ; the branch between Reston and Duns had been completed in 1849 and a western section to St Boswells was promoted as the Berwickshire Railway. It opened throughout on 2 October 1865. Other towns to be connected were Jedburgh by the independent Jedburgh Railway which was inaugurated on 17 July 1856 and worked by the NBR, and Selkirk via the Selkirk and Galashiels Railway, also opened in 1856 and operated by the NBR, while Langholm received a branch from , and Gretna one from . One of the last branches to be constructed was the Lauder Light Railway in 1901; this replaced an omnibus subsidised by the NBR providing access from the town of Lauder, famed for its trout, and connecting with trains at . Early years The completion of the Border Union Railway was an unwelcome development for the West Coast partnership set up by the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR), the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway and the Caledonian Railway, which had dominated the joint station at and the profitable Anglo-Scottish traffic which passed through it. By 1860, the traffic was generating more than £1,500,000 for the partnership; this represented more than two-thirds of its income. To protect their interests, the companies concluded a secret agreement to deny a share of the Carlisle traffic to the newcomer by providing that traffic from the south for Edinburgh had to be sent via the Caledonian main line unless specifically consigned to the NBR's Waverley line. This proved so effective that locomotive parts ordered by the NBR from the Midlands reached the company's St Margarets works in Edinburgh via the Caledonian. Nevertheless, the NBR did make some inroads into the partnership's traffic, and the Edinburgh-London goods traffic carried over the East Coast line declined from 4,045 tonnes in 1861 to 624 tonnes in 1863.