In 2000, North Berwick is served by an hourly train service to and from Edinburgh. However, the service was nearly lost when in 1963, the ‘destruction king’ of British Railways, the infamous Dr Beeching, placed a closure order on our branch line from Drem (Tindall, F.P. 1998 p272, Hajducki, A. (1992) pp140-143). Fortunately, three commuters and a retired British Rail employee formed a committee and working very closely with North Berwick Town Council placed an appeal before the Transport Users’ Consultative Committee. Their decision, after a public hearing in the Pavilion at which the town council evidence proved critical, was to retain the line, albeit with a reduced service of three trains per day either way. This proved inadequate for many commuters who had to resort to the much slower and less comfortable bus service. Happily, the train service is now much improved and is used extensively by commuters, whose numbers have increasingly swollen thanks to a buoyant jobs market in Edinburgh and the supply of new housing in North Berwick. However, while these trains do not now bring in hordes of summer visitors of the ‘stay-for-a-fortnight’ variety they deliver a goodly number of day visitors.
Once in the town, the volume of traffic causes severe problems, especially during the summer. The one-way traffic system in the High Street/ Forth Street began as long ago as August 1934, initially during the summer months, and was then extended to apply all year round. The first traffic warden in North Berwick was appointed in 1974.