 It was opened on 29 March 1847 and initially was the terminus on the East Coast Main Line as the Royal Border Bridge was not yet complete, so trains could not pass over the River Tweed.Once the Royal Border Bridge had been completed in 1850 and opened by Queen Victoria, trains had an unbroken run from London to Edinburgh.The station was designed (like all the other Newcastle and Berwick Railway ones) by Benjamin Green, but was considerably more ornate - costing over £8600 to construct (due to company chairman George Hudson's insistence that it be as ornate as the North British Railway's depot on the other side of the River Tweed).