The University of St Andrews was founded in 1413, but there was relatively little industry in the town, linen weaving being the chief occupation., and agriculture; there was a paper mill at Guardbridge.

There were some late changes to the proposed route, but the Edinburgh and Northern Railway's line opened on 20 September 1847 between Burntisland and Cupar by way of Kirkcaldy and Ladybank.

[3] People in St Andrews, seeing the reality of the Edinburgh and Northern position, decided that independent action was called for, and on 19 December 1850 a meeting agreed to promote a local scheme.

[5] It was emphasised that the subscribers to the line were local, avoiding getting involved in the contrary strategies of remote shareholders, and the directors of the new company had no previous railway experience.

This was Bouch's first commission in private practice,[5] and he determined to make a name for himself by designing cheap local railways; he argued that the later profitability of heavily engineered lines was dragged down by large and unnecessary costs at the construction stage.

St Andrews was a considerable community at the time, and the station there was some distance short of the centre, at the "sheep park",[5] just beyond the seventeenth hole of the Old Course.

Coach services were run from some of the nearby towns, including Crail, Pittenweem and Anstruther, to St Andrews, enabling onward travel by train.

[3][7] As early as 1853 the company was experiencing difficulty with the permanent way; Bouch's scheme for cheap railway construction had included laying sleepers at a pitch of four feet, considerably wider spacing than was usual.

It was said that £16,000 to £20,000 was required to replace the wooden bridges, and this was utterly beyond the financial resources of the St Andrews Railway Company, which now began to think of selling their line to the NBR.

Bouch was asked directly by the NBR chairman to consider the matter and he estimated that £12,561 was enough to relay the track in stronger materials and to replace the two bridges.

[3] When the St Andrews Railway Board discovered that this discussion had been taking place behind their backs, they were outraged: "No company would employ engines of 30 tons or upwards to work a branch 4½ miles in length."

[8] Notwithstanding the bad feeling between the two Companies, the contractual working agreements was still in force, and from June 1863 there were seven passenger trains each way daily, an eighth on Saturdays.

He said that, "The line is of very light and poor construction," and that the chairs "are weak, too narrow in the throat to admit a good key, and reported to be continually breaking".

[10] The Board of the St Andrews company evidently did not agree, for they protested that the wooden bridges were never intended to be permanent, and at the next Shareholders' Meeting declared the customary dividend of 4.5% instead of allocating any income to capital works improvements.

The opening of the Tay Bridge resulted in a considerable increase of passenger traffic to St Andrews, including an upsurge of excursion trains from Dundee.

[note 8][8] On a much smaller scale, the two river bridges on the St Andrews line that Bouch had designed were by now in urgent need of replacement, and this was achieved in 1889.

[3] The decline in use of the lines accelerated, and the southward route from St Andrews to Crail closed to passengers on 4 September 1965, and to goods on 18 July 1966.

The opening of the Tay Road Bridge in August 1966 immediately led to a 40% reduction in passenger usage of the St Andrews line.

In the midst of this depressing situation, the British Transport Commission built a new luxury hotel at St Andrews; it opened on 25 June 1968.

Locations on the passenger route from Leuchars were: On 4 September 1989, a formal campaign was launched to reconnect St Andrews to the rail network.

A report and track-layout proposal was developed in 2012 by Tata Steel and in summer 2015 StARLink launched its own pages on the social networking internet platforms Facebook and Twitter.

[15][16][17] StARLink continues to make the case for a new St Andrews railway, to which end its campaign regularly features in local and national media, both in print and on radio.