#caledonianrailway — Public Fediverse posts

“The Station Nobody Wanted”: the thread about Leith Central

Has there ever been a more remarkable railway terminus than Leith Central?

Sandy Mullay, The Station Nobody Wanted, Blastpipe No. 73, Scottish Railway Preservation Society, 1986.

If you stand in the car park of the Tesco supermarket at the foot of Easter Road, you could be forgiven for thinking the mighty walls you are confronted with are the remnant of some long-gone defensive rampart. And you’d be half right; they are a monument to a bitter and protracted corporate conflict waged in 19th century Scotland, a fortification thrown up by one combatant to deliberately keep another out of its territory. For these are the remains of Leith Central Station, about which everything was remarkable: its size, its cost, its short operational life, and the fact it was built by a company that never wanted it.

Leith Central owes its origins to the interminable struggle between Scotland’s two predominant Victorian railways: Edinburgh’s North British and Glasgow’s Caledonian. Wherever the two met, they fought: each built lines to block, circumvent or duplicate the other’s. The eventual result in Edinburgh and Leith was a confused spaghetti of railways that didn’t necessarily serve the travelling public well.

As the final decade of the nineteenth century approached, the North British had the upper hand in the east of the country. The completion of the Forth Bridge approached and the hostilities had somewhat fizzled out for the time being. They might have been forgiven for thinking their position in the city was unassailable; the Caley’s mainline had never got further east than its Edinburgh terminus of Princes Street Station and their route to Leith was by way of a circuitous backtrack of a branch. The NB was content with this situation but the Caley had other ideas and was hatching a plan to upset this status quo. They would build a fourth line to Leith and would do so in the most bold and direct manner: tunnelling east beneath Princes Street to a new underground station at Waterloo Place. From there they would continue staight through the Calton Hill and over London Road before turning towards the heart of Leith. And they wouldn’t stop there, they would press on to connect with their existing line at Newhaven, thus completing a circular suburban line around the north of Edinburgh. This would be a counterbalance to the NB’s suburban circle around the south of the city. The threat to the incumbent did not end there, crucially this scheme would give the aggressor a direct route to Leith docks from the east, wherein lay access to the black diamonds of the Midlothian coal traffic.

Leith Town Council was desperate for better transport links to the burgh and enthusiastically threw its support behind the plans. But the full weight of the Edinburgh establishment was dead set against them: they would defile Princes Street and the disruption would far outweigh any benefits. The city thus sought to scupper the scheme. This was a point not lost on the North British, to whom the Caley’s plan was a direct declaration of war in its own front yard. That railway didn’t really want to build another line to Leith, but came to realise one could be used as a means to ruin the Caley’s eastern aspirations once and for all. More importantly, it could be used as political leverage to get them what they truly desired and desperately needed. The completion of the Forth Bridge had shown the capacity and facilities of Waverley, what should have been their premier station, to be totally inadequate. Transport chaos was reigning there and a complete rebuild and expansion was urgently required.

What would become the Leith Central scheme was not therefore a stand-alone proposal. It was actually just one part of a wider bill, passed as the Waverley Station Extension Act 1891 on August 5th that year. With this the NB got what it wanted; Leith Central was the price it had to pay the Corporations of Edinburgh and Leith for their support. From the very beginning  it was thus an unusual railway, built not because there was any real need for it, or because it would make its operator any money, or because the company even wanted it. It was purely to be built to spite the competition.

The Act gave powers to acquire twelve acres of land in Leith for a new station – a whole block between Leith Walk and Easter Road, bounded by Duke Street to the north. A third of this was to be made available as compensation to the Caley; Leith Town Council remained naively hopeful that the two sworn enemies might come to terms and open a joint station. This area was already well developed and a significant amount of property would have to be acquired and demolished. This included the Central Hall, a billiards emporium that had begun life as a Methodist Chapel, and the Central Bar just around the corner. The railway agreed to provide the proprietor of the latter, John Doig, with a replacement establishment. To this day that remains called the Central Bar and Doig’s name is still to be found within the stained glass panels displayed in its windows.

If Leith thought it would get its new railway any time soon then it was badly mistaken. The NB was focussed on the Waverley redevelopment and so deliberately dragged their heels. Progress was glacial, especially by Victorian standards. They took five years to authorise the start of work, which did not begin until February 1896. It took eighteen more months to complete the plans and submit them for approval of Leith’s councillors. Despite the latter’s chagrin at the pace they were most pleased with what they saw. Their only amendments were to request a prominent public clock on the corner with Duke Street and the raising of the height of the approach bridge over Easter Road by two feet. The railway readily agreed to the first but counter-proposed on the second that the Burgh should instead lower the street level by fifteen inches. This was accepted and to maintain the existing thresholds the pavement was stepped down to the carriageway, something that has long caught out drinkers stumbling out of the Persevere bar.

The appointed engineers were Cunningham, Blyth and Westland of George Street, who had recently completed the new North Bridge and doubled the approach tunnels to Waverley. In September 1898 the Railway Times reported that demolition works had concluded and initial construction begun on the station’s frontage onto Leith Walk (200 feet long) and Duke Street (220 feet). This was the only part of the project completed in any sort of haste: by the summer of 1899 its commercial premises were being let and bringing in valuable rental income. Work did not commence on the actual branch line from Waverley until 1901, a decade after the Act of Parliament. The pace remained positively lethargic and it took two further years to complete that mile of track.

As Leith Central began slowly to rise from the ground though, it was clear for all to see that the scale of it was staggering. It was 830 feet long from end-to-end. Its footprint was 15,900 square metres (about 4 acres), making it almost a quarter the size of Waverley. It was just a smidgen smaller than the Caley’s Princes Street terminus (16,500 square metres) and totally dwarfed Haymarket (8,400 square metres), the NB’s second station in the city.

The concourse and platforms were raised up to first floor level to allow the approach tracks to cross over Easter Road. Offices and waiting rooms were at this level and there was 4,500 square feet of vault space beneath. In sharp contrast to the notoriously low and claustrophobic Waverley, the whole lot was topped off with a lofty glass roof it engineered by none other than Sir William Arrol and Co. who had built the Forth Bridge. Rising above the four storey tenements adjacent, author Alasdair Wham described it as a “huge glass cavern over sixty feet high… which broadened from 100 feet at the Easter Road end to more than double that width”. A Scotsman columnist would later write “when a gale is blowing off the [Forth], the whole roof rattles and groans“. Despite the vast scale though there were only four platforms, although each was 790 feet long. The interior was electrically lit and so was the clock – the latter at the request of Leith Town Council who agreed to pay the meter.

Above the frontage on Duke Street were two further storeys containing flats for railway servants. The rear windows of these looked down upon the concourse and there was a private stairway down to platform level. One of the more notable occupants would be a clerk called George Mathers who in 1935 he was elected as MP for Linlithgowshire. He boasted to the newspapers that his commute to London was unique: he could get from his “own back door” to London Kings Cross without ever stepping out from a station and “getting his feet wet“.

The station was advantageously located at the Foot O’ the Walk with its principal public entrance was on the corner below its clock. Around the corner there was a ramp up to a vehicle entrance on the corner of Crown Place and from Easter Road there was a further entrance giving access through a subway beneath the tracks. (the extreme length of the station however gave a rather long hike to reach trains from this direction.)

To control the complex arrangement of approach tracks and carriage sidings, there was an 81-lever signal box located at track level at the eastern end. This also controlled access to a turntable on the opposite side of Easter Road, used for turning locomotives around at the end of their journey.

As 1903 dawned, Leith Town Council was frustrated that it was still not open. They wrote to the railway in April to enquire when that might change; the reply came that Major Pringle of the Board of Trade would begin his approval inspection on May 30th. This passed off without difficulty and opening was finally set for July 1st. The North British was now confronted with a final bill as monumental as the building: £500,000 (c. £57 million in 2026). This was a huge sum for the time, to put it into context it was a third of what the entire reconstruction of Waverley had set them back. The company had a long-standing reputation for this sort of spendthriftness, much to the frustration of its shareholders.

Yet the North British was also notoriously penny-pinching, and they took this to extremes in the utterly minimal effort they put into the opening of Leith Central. There was little in the way of advance advertising; a stationmaster had not yet been appointed; only a single ticket window was staffed and the refreshment rooms remained shuttered. No ceremony was arranged, and the Town Councils of Edinburgh and Leith weren’t even invited. On the appointed Wednesday morning, the 5:55AM to Waverley simply departed the station as the new timetable stated it would and that was that. The Edinburgh Evening Dispatch likened the little engine that pulled the first train out of the huge station to a “Skye Terrier pup in its four storey kennel“.

Such was the railway’s disinterest that they didn’t even bothered to open the entrances! Instead a single, poorly-signed and half-hidden door served as the only way in or out. This caused problems to members of the public who were trying to find their way in. The Rev. Thomas Crerar of North Leith United Free Church soon wrote to the company to complain that he had been unable to find it and instead “accidentally” found himself in the Central Bar. To begin with the only service offered was a shuttle service to Waverley. This took just 6 minutes from Leith (uphill) and 5 minutes on the return (downhill). These trains were nicknamed Penny Jerks on account of the short, sharp journey, but their frequency – just twice an hour – was poor. The Saturday service was lighter yet, but on the opening week a one-off excursion was run to Portobello and Musselburgh. Come the Sabbath however and the gates remained firmly locked to the travelling public, a precedent that was maintained for the entirety of its working life.

Despite their best efforts to discourage patronage the NB soon found they had a hit on their hands. Almost 16,000 tickets were sold in the first four days. The reason proved obvious – the competing tramway to Edinburgh remained horse-drawn for half the route before a change on to Edinburgh’s cable system; the infamous Pilrig Muddle. Slowly the railway began to respond to the success of their massive investment. Within a month they opened the main entrance beneath the clock, followed shortly thereafter by that on Easter Road. In September a permanent station master was appointed: Alexander Somerville from Abbeyhill. The same month the list of destinations was expanded by making Central the start and end point of the half-hourly “circle” services that ran around the Suburban & Southside Junction line (aka the South Sub). This was an operational benefit to the railway as previously trains had to be held at Waverley for 15 minutes, time instead used for the additional revenue-making run to Leith. Abbeyhill thus became the only intermediate direct stop between Central and Waverley, although space had been left between the tracks for another at Hawkhill. Finally, in December a second ticket window was opened.

The revised circle service proved a success too, having hitherto been rather unpopular. As a result the prices were lowered a new “Zone Ticket System” for regular commuters was introduced. It also allowed the old South Leith Station to finally be closed, its handful of services to and from Midlothian being relocated to Central. Further expansion of the destination list was limited to extending a few Glasgow and Dundee services through from Waverley. Thus for most of its life, Leith Central essentially remained an outsize terminus for weekday local commuters, punctuated by occasional busy spells for holiday, excursion and football specials.

Much of the initial bump of success was at the company’s own expense however: the North British found patronage at their North Leith station on Commercial Street suffered a 20% drop. The truth was that Leith only had so many passengers to offer and while the new station provided the quickest route to Edinburgh they were happy to use it. But the NB seemed content with this arrangement; they had seen off the challenge from the Caley and now they could sit back and profit from the lack of direct competition with minimal further effort.

On May 23rd 1915, Leith Central had the grim honour of receiving the first of over 120 local victims who had lost their lives in the Quintinshill Railway Disaster the previous day. These were the remains of the men of A & D Companies, 1/7th Royal Scots, a unit formed largely of volunteers from Leith. Most had departed the same station just a month earlier for Stenhousemuir, where they would complete their basic training before being ordered to the front at Gallipoli. On their return they were taken the short distance to a makeshift morgue in the Battalion’s drill hall on Dalmeny Street. This catastrophe caused an estimated 227 deaths and 246 injuries: the worst rail disaster in British history. The shattered remnants of the regiment would return through Leith Central once more after the war’s end to a heroes welcome.

When peace returned, the NB’s still maintained its competitive advantage on the Leith to Edinburgh traffic, but not for long. In 1922 the Pilrig Muddle was finally resolved after 28 years when Leith was integrated into Edinburgh’s new electric tramway. This caught the railway not just caught napping, but fast asleep: the “cars” served far more destinations, more frequently, were much faster for cross-town journeys and were cheaper.

The effect on Central’s traffic was immediate; it crashed. With its principal source of revenue largely poached, it was now patently obvious to any remaining doubters what Leith Central really was:

A massive White Elephant

W. A. C. Smith, writing about Leith Central in “Edinburgh’s Last Days of Steam”, 2003

The NB has been accused of taking its eye off the ball, however perhaps this can be excused. It was a time of great upheaval in the industry and it was facing a far more existential threat than trams. In 1923 the Government took the drastic action known in as “The Grouping“, which rationalised over one hundred companies into just four in an effort to make them profitable. The NB found itself merged into the new London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). This vast new organisation had much more pressing matters to worry about as than a provincial commuter station (even a very big one). They would therefore refrain from efforts to try and stimulate new sources of traffic on or modernise the Central branch and it remained steam worked until the end.

With not much to do around the place, one of the station master’s principal duties appears to have been holding the keys for the large numbers of flats and shops for let within the station. The railway tried to find uses for the excess of unused space around the place. A number of rooms were given over for training of their volunteer ambulance teams and competitions between the different stations were frequently held here. They also used it for the annual auction of the unclaimed lost property from across their network. The Evening News reported on a real Ali’s cave of bargains up for grabs. Lots ranged from expected items such as watches, golf clubs, tennis rackets, umbrellas, musical instruments, suitcases, spectacles, prams, bicycles and jewellery to the more unusual: deck chairs, a trouser press, a sewing machine, a wheelbarrow, false teeth, a basket of pot lids, a bell tent, sails for a yacht and even a collapsible boat!

For most of the ‘twenties and ‘thirties, Central lived the life of a quiet, if vast, backwater. That changed in 1937 when it had its most eventful and unusual year. On June 23rd there was a “melee” outside when a party of Fascists – intent on making a public speech – was met, surrounded and attacked by the Leith Mob. Police who had been waiting for the trouble in the station took some time to restore order. On August 6th a workman, George Fraser of 53 Dumbiedykes Road, was killed when he fell through the station roof onto the platform below. He landed on his colleague Robert Beveridge, also of Dumbiedykes Road, who was seriously injured as a result.

On 29th October there was a serious early-morning fire, which spread from a waiting room and took nine hours to extinguish. Firefighters had to contend with the panes of glass in the roof above shattering in the heat and raining down shards upon them. When the smoke cleared it was found that the timber facings and decking of two of the platforms had been destroyed for a length of 112 yards. Five coaches and three horse vans were also burnt out. Little in the way of permanent damage was done though and services were back up and running the next day at 9AM. The same cannot be said for the resident pigeon population however, most of whom were asphyxiated by the smoke. A further fire in the roof on 30th November was more minor and was brought under control by a single fire engine, causing just £100 of damage.

The station had a relatively quiet war, with services cut back and the Easter Road entrance closed for reasons of economy. The long platforms meant it was regularly used for troop and hospital trains. The sales of lost property were particularly competitive during wartime as eager buyers sought to get items that were no longer readily available, particularly clothing.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/47179713432

When peace returned the 1946/47 timetable issued by the LNER would be their penultimate. It shows the Jerks were week days only, with a small number of services working morning, mid-day and evening commuter patterns. There were twelve services per day from Leith. Three in the morning (the first at 5:41); five around mid-day including and four for the evening – the last departing at 18:10. There was a single through-train to Glasgow each day. From Edinburgh there were ten trips in the opposite direction; four for the morning (the first at 7:21), four for the mid-day and two in the evening, the last at 18:55. There were seven departures from Leith a day on the Suburban “outer circle” line, and ten in the opposite direction. As with the Jerks, these were concentrated in morning, mid-day and the early evening. The last train left Central each week day at 18:11, the last arrived at 19:00. On Saturdays the service was lighter yet and on Sunday there remained no service at all.

The following year, the second major change of ownership came and on 1st January 1948 the railways were nationalised. The first timetables issued by the new British Railways basically maintained the LNER’s scant service pattern at the station. An unusual visitor arrived in 1948 when an exhibition of new and unusual rolling stock was put on for the public. The star draw was the Silver Princess, a modern American showcase design built by the Budd company and with a striking exterior finish of polished, corrugated stainless steel.

Nationalisation ushered in a new era for the railways but for Leith Central it meant rationalisation. It was an obvious early candidate for cost cutting and in March 1952 the Scottish Region announced that all services would be withdrawn from April 7th that year: less than fifty years after they began. An alternative but lengthier route from Edinburgh to Leith would be maintained on the former Caledonian line from Princes Street Station to North Leith (which at this time was confusingly renamed Leith North!) Parcels traffic was re-routed to Waverley station and delivered onwards to Leith from there. The Scostman reported “there was a melancholy air of impending dissolution in the Central. A train was being prepared to go out on its journey through the suburbs. There is only one full-scale train a day from the Central – the 12:45 to Glasgow.” In a somewhat appropriate symmetry to the occasion of its opening, there were no ceremonials at closing. Just four years later, the last of the city’s trams would also be withdrawn: they had killed off Leith Central decades before and in turn were killed off by a deliberate policy of “busification”.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/49512520986/in/photolist-2irfBuW-2j3H7or-2npqwSM-XVEzW3-2kBmVuA-2orYhB6-2jkWLwJ-2aygLjN-2g4gbQM-SPyAj3-2nCsqbD-2dfiX7F-FwivHN-2jtQsbn-2jw5G61-2nu2SFg-2b4tbsC-2aXH8NC-2kBKrxP-2meizEe-ahQGYA-2iYw7be-2quoJrq-2ipAoMz-2paa5NZ-2kDaDxT-2dpLx5y-2n2zfV2-2mUEF4F-2iUACkS-2o2HJpX-2k8kAxP-G6z1jy-GatKs7-PiB7sG-2gwqdWb-2nhKRBh-2kUDVE1-2fcYeZR-2hjD4kK-QTDKkb-7KdeUY-2jURgV5-2h7TCiT-2jeutfC-2hAwefp-e3wHHc-Q9MAQr-2qyhwf1-ZFF1re

Curiously, despite the removal of all its services, the station actually remained in use and the Outer Circle suburban trains continued to start and finish their journeys there: but the carriages were empty and you couldn’t get on or off! For a few years the place was used for such marshalling of services as well as the storage and cleaning of coaching stock. A new purpose came in 1955 when work began to convert it to a dedicated maintenance facility (code 64H) for the new generation of diesel rail cars. These were taking over Edinburgh’s remaining suburban rail routes and also those to Glasgow. The depot also served as a training school for these new vehicles. It’s somewhat ironic that these were exactly the sort of modern, efficient units that really could have benefited the station when it was in operation.

The new era would prove to be even shorter than the first. Edinburgh’s suburban rail network was cut back to almost nothing over the coming decade, the last services running in 1968, and in 1972 the Glasgow multiple units were replaced by locomotive stock. Much of Leith Central Depot’s work therefore evaporated before it ever really got going and it closed in 1972, its few remaining duties relocated to Millerhill and Haymarket.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/49362392322/

A final passenger service had been worked on October 16th 1971, a special put on for enthusiasts, but in April the next year once again Central was closed without ceremony and found itself abandoned. The access bridge over Easter Road was removed within the year, definitely precluding any further railway usage.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/54917798746/

The railways could be a dangerous place to work and there were a number of fatalities at Leith Central and along its branch during its operational life.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/16881499619/

Plans did not take long to materialise for the next phase of Leith Central’s life. In March 1973 the Scotsman reported that Bovis Properties (Scotland) Ltd proposed to clear the site and redevelop it in an £8 million scheme for shops, offices and a 500 space car park. This ultimately came to nothing and in 1974 BR told the same paper they were “re-exploring the possibilities“. “Re-exploration” took four years and it was not until 1978 that Edinburgh District Council announced they were in negotiations to acquire the site and turn it into “Britain’s biggest indoor sports stadium“. This ambitious £6 million proposal would cater for twenty-seven different pursuits and would have included a central multi-purpose main arena with athletics track and further arenas for general sports, carpet bowls and squash. There would be two practice halls, a training gym and even a “projectile range“. The Council purchased the site for £440,000 in 1979 and spent a further £160,000 on planning.

The scheme was proposed by a Conservative controlled council, but in an odd reversal for the usual precedent of British politics it found itself cancelled by pressure from Labour ranks. This happened in April 1982 on account of ballooning costs and a lack of funds. The station had now been abandoned for a decade and was succumbing to the vandals as the authorities tried to work out a future for it.

With their sports centre scheme dead in the water, in 1983 the District decided to dispose of the problem site on the private housing market. There was an initial flurry of interest but only a single, derisory offer was forthcoming, one that less than half what the authority had paid for it. 1980s Leith was severely economically depressed and was already awash with brownfield residential development opportunities. The District reluctantly approved the sale to Barratt Developments but this was blocked in 1984 by an incoming Labour administration.

Once again it was back to the drawing board for Leith Central, which now entered the final and most notorious chapter of its life. Its vast interior was reduced to the haunt of alcoholics and drug addicts and would be immortalised in Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel Trainspotting. The title comes from the chapter “Trainspotting at Leith Central Station“, a sardonic joke on the fact there had been no trains to spot there in twenty years. While the station plays a symbolic part in the story, representative of “a disintegrating and ignored community“. In the prequel, Skagboys, the character Spud will misidentify the former Caley railway bridge crossing Leith Walk as “the auld line ootay Leith Central Station“.

The Labour District Council proposed a new scheme in 1986 that included a 30,000 square foot supermarket to help fund a new leisure centre. This proposal was immediately delayed however when Lothian Regional Council counter-proposed a new Leith Academy secondary school nearby that included community sports and recreation facilities, including a pool. Updated plans were made public the following year for a £12m scheme for a 35,000 square foot supermarket and a leisure pool (“the finest in Scotland“). All but the listed station buildings along Leith Walk and Duke Street, and northern retaining wall, would be demolished. With very limited public funding available, a private sector partner was brought in to finance and build the scheme: Walker Construction (Scotland) Ltd of Livingston.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/52809440@N03/37552337810

Work was due to begin in October 1988 but an eleventh-hour spanner was thrown in the works when the Council was told that their intended leaseback financing for the pool was not viable. A revised financial package was approved in December; they would instead borrow £3m to build the shell of the pool themselves and Walkers would finance the interior fit-out and plant, which would be leased back. The Scottish Development Agency (SDA) contributed £1.4 million to clear and level the site, with the Supermarket being financed entirely privately.

The Trainspotting years came to an end in January 1989 when Dalton Demolition moved in and got to work. In March two passers-by were hospitalised and three cars were written-off when a 63 foot section of the station wall collapsed onto Duke Street. The contractors salvaged the station’s dressed stone and offered it for sale. Some pieces were acquired by the Scottish-Italian artist and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi who had been born next door in Crown Place. He incorporated them into the planting around his Manuscript of Monte Cassino sculpture outside St Mary’s Cathedral on Picardy Place. These stones were later relocated to London Road Gardens when the roads and public realm here were changed during the redevelopment of the St James Centre area. The statues were returned but the stones still languish forgotten and out of context there, with a nearby plaque commemorating the former Picardy Place roundabout!

In March 1990 Scotmid Co-operative were announced as the operators of the new supermarket and opened their doors on July 31st 1991. The leisure pool, by now Christened Leith Waterworld, was somewhat delayed and did not open until May 1992. In August that year, the final part of the station redevelopment began when the gap in the tenements on Easter Road, where the railway tracks had once burst through at first floor level, was filled with a new 5-storey block of flats. If you look closely at the façade of this block you will notice large pieces of sandstone inserted in it – these come from the station.

Much like its railway predecessor, Leith Waterworld was a grand facility that had taken a long time and a lot of money to build. It too was initially highly popular with the public but was also was unlikely to have ever been profitable. It operated at a deficit from day one and by 2004 was losing £1,500 a day. In was an all too familiar tale, its operators cut back opening hours to reduce losses, but this made it ever-harder for it to pay its way. Like the station before it, the leisure pool proved to have a similarly short service life. It closed after just 20 years in 2012 despite a spirited campaign to keep it open (and re-open it as a community-owned facility afterwards). It was bitter compensation to future generations that its closure was used to finance the refurbishment of the diving facilities at the Royal Commonwealth Pool ahead of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Caledonian Railway 0-4-4T Class 439 No 419 - ETW Dennis Postcard

https://www.ebid.net/uk/for-sale/caledonian-railway-0-4-4t-class-439-no-419-etw-dennis-postcard-223897871.htm

#CaledonianRailway #Railways #Falkirk

What all the coverage of the proposals to route the #trams from #Granton back towards #Haymarket down the #RoseburnPath are failing to mention is why there is a wide, and fairly level path going between Granton and Haymarket in the first place.

It all becomes pretty obvious when you look at a map of the old Granton branch of the #CaledonianRailway that closed in stages up to 1986… https://www.railscot.co.uk/companies/G/Granton_Branch_Caledonian_Railway/

https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/the-new-edinburgh-tram-route-28539271

The thread about the baffling naming of Leith railway stations; know your North Leith from your Leith North; which South Leith is which and whether Leith Walk West or Leith Walk East is westmost!

This thread was originally written and published in September 2019.

We went to visit Trinity House expecting to find some treasures of Leith maritime history, but we were surprised to find some local railway history hidden round the back too, a bench from South Leith Railway Station which closed way, way back in 1903.

So let’s go on a little #NowAndThen visual trip down memory lane to South Leith station. The view is taken from Constitution Street looking east along the trackbed, what is now Tower Street. The tall remnant of buildings behind were part of the first Leith gas works, before they moved to Granton with the Edinburgh gas works. The station building is on the right, with the single platform behind it.

This was the first railway station in Leith, and was originally named as such when it opened in 1832 as an extension of the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway. This line ran from St. Leonards in Edinburgh to Midlothian, Leith being accessed by a reverse junction near Niddrie. This was the so-called “Innocent Railway“, in Scotch Gauge of 4ft 6in and horse drawn throughout. Looking the other way towards the Shore (and a prime example of that dreadful noughties architectural fad for oversized and inappropriate corner rotundas) we see Leith’s old Tower in the distance down Tower Street. Notice that the railway was not quite aligned with the modern Tower Street, but parallel. This continuation of the line beyond Constitution Street gave access to the east side of the port and its industries.

The station was on the sea front when it was built, with Leith Sands beyond and the high tide line beyond that. The railway providing a new boundary between land and shore as Leith crept northwards into the Forth. This station was handy for the Shore, where the steamers left from at the time, but was quickly swallowed up by seaward extensions of the docks and became increasingly inconveniently positioned. In 1845 the North British Railway bought over the Edinburgh & Dalkeith and set about converting their new possession into standard gauge and steam power. However, they were not interested in passenger traffic here – it was routes South from Edinburgh that had caused them to buy the E&DR – and closed South Leith to passengers in 1846. The line remained open for dock traffic, always it’s primary purpose as it had been built as a direct connection to the Midlothian Coalfield.

The naming of Leith’s railway stations was always a bit confusing. For a relatively small place, it had a lot of various stations and they were often duplicated due to the competing nature of the North British (NBR) and Caledonian Railways (CR), who fought petulantly with each other for access to the lucrative docks and industrial traffic. To add confusion, when most of these stations were first named, Leith was two distinct municipal parishes; South Leith and North Leith. These are ancient names, referring to the banks of the river of Water of Leith on which they lie, geographically they are more east and westerly of one and other than south and northerly. At various times there were stations called Leith, Leith Central, South Leith, North Leith, Leith North, Leith Citadel, Leith East, Leith Walk, Leith Walk West and Leith Walk East! (And that’s not counting those stations in the Leith boundaries which don’t have “Leith” in their name.)

The next station to open in Leith was North Leith in 1846. It was opened as a branch of the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton Railway, which ran from Canal Street Station (at right angles to the present day Waverley), through the Scotland Street Tunnel to Trinity and on to a rail ferry at Granton Docks. The NBR bought this railway too in 1862 and experimented with calling the station variously Leith Citadel or Leith North, before settling back on North Leith. They re-opened the old Edinburgh & Dalkeith Leith station in 1859 as a single platform called South Leith.

The next arrival was that of the Caledonian Railway, who opened a station called Leith in 1869 on a rather circuitous line around the North and West of the city from Princes Street Station via Roseburn and Newhaven. It would be renamed North Leith in 1903. To get around the confusion of two rival North Leith stations being a few hundred metres from each other on the same street, most maps stuck with Leith for the Caley station and North Leith for the NBR. To locals it would just have been the Caley and North British stations.

The North Leith muddles would be solved in 1947 when the ex-NBR station, by now 24 years in the LNER grouping, was closed to passenger traffic. Rather pointlessly, 5 years later the ex-Caley North Leith was renamed Leith North, and the ex-NBR North Leith goods station once again became Leith Citadel!

The renaming of the Caley station was not the only change on the Leith railway map in 1903; this was the year the North British opened their (far too) vast station at Leith Central – which of course was well to the south of South Leith… It’s arrival resulted in the closure of the latter station for the second and final time. Leith Central was on a fairly short branch from Waverley via Abbeyhill, but could never match the electric tramway on speed, frequency, convenience and on proximity to destinations, so it always struggled for patronage. Leith Central was the last major railway terminus built in Scotland, and had a short life, closing in 1952 after a fairly unintense life. It had been built more as a symbol of the NBR‘s dominance and a blocker to the Caley opening a passenger station in the centre of Leith than anything else.

Those grand Caley plans were the Leith New Lines, a very expensive and winding route around Leith to connect the eastern and western sides of the Docks. Large goods stations were opened at Bonnington, Leith Walk, Restalrig and South Leith; where it caused confusion with the NBR South Leith goods station. The Caley had wanted to provide passenger stations too; the platforms and some other structures for these were actually built, at Victoria Park in Trinity and above street level on Leith Walk on the Gordon Street railway arches. After Leith Walk, the intention was a costly branch to Princes Street station from a junction near Lochend via tunnels under Calton Hill and cut-and-cover tunnelling of Princes Street itself. None of these plans came to fruition though, the NBR‘s massive Leith Central meant it would have been a costly folly (which Leith Central admittedly also was).

The two parallel, neighbouring South Leith Goods stations of the NBR and Caley happily co-existed side-by-side into the 1950s, when British Railway in their wisdom renamed the ex-NBR station Leith South and ex-CR station Leith East. The latter closed in the 1970s, the former lasted into the 1990s, its yard (South Leith Yard) is still technically in use, but has not seen any traffic in the best part of 10 years.

The last set of Leith-named stations were those of Leith Walk – none of which are actually in Leith by any definition later than the 18th century! Leith Walk passenger station was opened by the NBR in 1869 when they built a diversionary line from Waverley station to Trinity via Abbeyhill to avoid the awkward Scotland Street tunnel. Passenger stations were added along the line, including where it passed under Leith Walk at Shrubhill. An enormous goods yard was provided on the east side of the Walk. When the Caley opened their Leith New Lines in 1903, they also provided a goods yard for Leith Walk, further to the north. Both were called Leith Walk (goods) so inevitably were referred to as the North British or Caley to differentiate them.

The passenger station closed in 1930, another victim of competition from the electric tramway. After nationalisation, the ever wise British Railways decided to rationalise matters and renamed the ex-NBR station Leith Walk East and the ex-Caley station Leith Walk West. This makes perfect sense in principle to a naming committee in a far off office, except it results in Leith Walk East being more westerly than Leith Walk West on account of Leith Walk not running on a true north-south axis! Nothing is ever straightforward when it comes to the names of Leith’s railway stations!

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2025, Andy Arthur

#NowAndThen #CaledonianRailway #Caley #EdinburghDalkeithRailway #NorthBritishRailway #RailwayStations #Railways #transport #Transportation #Written2019

Take the “High Line”: the thread about Leith’s unbuilt park through the rooftops

I found something very interesting hidden away in a cardboard file in a corner of Leith Library. The title – City of Edinburgh, Leith Local Plan, Draft Final Report, April 1975. Volume Two. Schedules and Appendices. – was so snappy that I couldn’t help but start reading it. This was the plan for a £90 million redevelopment and rejuvenation of Leith, which by this time was suffering badly from industrial decline, urban depopulation, poor housing stock and a general lack of public amenities. As part of this plan it was proposed that the Edinburgh Corporation as it then was (after 1975 it was Edinburgh District Council) would purchase the abandoned trackbed of the Caledonian Railway which ran from Pilrig Park to Seafield via Restalrig, over Leith Walk and Easter Road. This would be converted into a landscaped walkway through the area, what nowadays we might term a linear park.

This section of railway, formally known as the Leith New Lines, was one of the last to be built in the city and did not open until 1903. Its purpose was to give the Caley access from its existing line into Leith Docks from the west to the expanding eastern portion of the docklands. It would cut its way through the dense industrial heartlands of Leith and Bonnington, serving these with large and convenient new goods stations.

On paper this was a sound proposal but by this time the best potential routes through Leith were already well built on, therefore it had to take a winding and circuitous route requiring substantial and expensive engineering. There were numerous cuttings and viaducts required plus skew girder bridges over thoroughfares at Bonnington Toll, Leith Walk and Easter Road. As if that wasn’t enough, it also had to cross three different North British Railway lines, the Water of Leith and cut beneath Ferry Road.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/40040319893/

This railway never fulfilled its potential, a planned passenger service was never introduced and its twin tracks soon singled. The western section between Newhaven and Bonnington closed in 1965. In 1968 the low bridge over Bonnington Toll was removed and the goods station off Leith Walk at Stead’s Place (Leith Walk West) was closed. For a few years the eastern section at Seafield lingered on giving access to the Leith East goods yard at Salamander Street but this too closed in 1973, making the entire line redundant. British Rail gave notice at this point that it intended to demolish its monumental girder bridges over Leith Walk and Easter Road plus a smaller one over Halmyre Street to reduce their maintenance burden.

The 1975 path scheme saw the opportunity to purchase the route from British Rail before they proceeded with demolition and proposed to replace these large, expensive structures with lightweight footbridges and to retain the smaller bridge over Halmyre Street. This would give an elevated walkway from Pilrig Park, across the arches of the viaducts at Jane Street, Manderston Street and Gordon Street and from there along the embankments and cuttings all the way to Seafield.

The bridges at Easter Road and Manderston Street would be removed in early 1980, with that over Leith Walk following in September that year.

It have assumed that because the bridge over Halmyre Street was to be retained that the viaduct between there and Easter Road, which cut its way rudely through the back greens between Gordon Street and Thorntree Street would have been kept too.

This ambitious urban realm scheme of course never came to pass. By the time an updated version of the Final Plan was published in 1980 it had been quietly dropped. One assumes this was because of the disruption caused to local government when the old unitary Corporation of the City of Edinburgh was replaced in 1975 and split up into the two-tier system of Edinburgh District Council and a combined Lothian Regional Council. Instead there was a cut back scheme to purchase the trackbed between Seafield and Easter Road and to landscape it as a pathway with funding from the Scottish Development Agency (SDA). While this at least did come to pass, the word “landscape” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and in reality this path was really just a strip of compressed dirt covered in dog mess and rubbish, with obstructive barriers to try and stop you cycling it without getting off and pushing. This would not be remedied until around 2010 when it was properly surface, the barriers were removed, new access points were added and lighting was provided.

Item 26 on the above list, the railway embankment through Pilrig Park, did also ended up being achieved although the link through to Leith Walk never happened. The viaduct from Pilrig Park to Leith Walk remains fence off, although recent redevelopment on the site of the former Leith Walk West goods yard means there is now a rather roundabout connection some 45 years later through an access road.

Item 27, the second walkway which was planned in both 1975 and 1980, along the old North British Railway trackbed alongside the Water of Leith, from Coburg Street to Warriston, would come to pass. This opened in June 1982, making it the first old railway track to formally be converted to a foot and cycle path in Edinburgh, and the first of many more miles to come.

The opportunity to do something between Pilrig Park and Easter Road is one that has never been properly grasped. In more recent times (although over 10 years ago now!) there was a semi-serious attempt to drum up interest in reviving the idea, with a connection between Pilrig Park and Halmyre Street achieved by building a show-piece timber and cable bridge across Leith Walk. How serious this actually was I do not know, I don’t recall any funding ever being in place even for planning, and providing level access to street level at the Thorntree Street end remains a difficult proposition. Even if it had been approved, like other schemes such as the section of Railway between Powderhall and Meadowbank, there’s a very good chance that it would still find itself in development limbo.

But if you happen to find yourself walking along past the garages which occupy the Manderston and Gordon Street arches, it’s easy to forget that there’s actually a railway station platform up there above your head, one which was built over 120 years ago but never actually opened. Although some lucky souls in the path have at least had the chance to get off a train there and head down its stairs to street level…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/20376697129/in/photolist-boJLaJ-fcWT7Y-x3BU9i-2dg6Nwb-2cYnzaH

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.