#lner — Public Fediverse posts

First paint job was horrid. I've stripped it down and done it again. This is with satin teak varnish and dry-brushing that involves putting varnish onto the brush, removing as much as possible on a paper towel and brushing what remains on.

It's very thin layers and takes a long time. This is with 20 layers, but I took a photo after each layer just for reference when I do the other side.

Meanwhile I'm 3d printing the bogies too.

#IanKirk #LNER #modelrailway #ModelRailways #7mm #ogauge

Beading cut, placed into the right places (I hope) and the sides given a spray of primer for plastic parts. The teak varnish has turned up so the next thing is to test my abilities with that on some scrap wood to see whether I've got the right stuff/whether I'm capable.

The last railway kit I built was an Airfix loco 50 years ago...

I've done lots of research on gresley teak coaches and their interiors. You can go mad on detailing.

#IanKirk #LNER #modelrailway #7MM #ogauge #modelrailwaysuk

Spent ages making a jig to glue the base and ends to the sides and now I don't think I need it.

I've returned to the sides - where they are glued together leaves a glue mark and there should be a piece of plastic to cover that. What I'm learning is that the kit doesn't contain all the parts so you have to improvise.

Here's 5 lengths of 0.8mmx1mm printed on the printer ready to cut and glue.

Next is probably the hardest bit for me - painting it teak

#IanKirk #modelrailway #7MM #ogauge #LNER

I tested whether the Kirk kit would stick to the jig accidentally by using an off-cut sprue and it didn't so that's good.

Both sides carefully sanded with wet and dry and glued with Slaters MEK-PAK now - next is to cut the plasticard to length and glue it to the back when the glue has set to give it some rigidity.

Then I guess I need to paint it teak. That'll be a challenge for me....

#IanKirk #7MM #LNER #modelrailway #ogauge

Here's the Ian Kirk parts against the Isinglass drawing to make sure I've got it right.

Then cut the parts away from the sprues - the sprues have other parts attached that are probably vital so I'll keep them.

Then put the plasticard stiffener in the jig.

The the parts get laid into the jig glue them together - well the next step is to make sure that if I run glue in between the parts, they don't all get glued to the jig so I'll test that first.

#lner #iankirk #ogauge #7mm #modelRailways

New one printed with five connectors - much more sturdy. It has occurred to me that the glue I'm going to use might stick to the PLA jig and maybe that's why people normally make them out of wood. Current plan is to cut a 600mm strip of paper to lay on the jig in case the glue keeps through and at least then the coach sides won't stick to the jig.

#ModelRailways #7MM #IanKirk #ogauge #LNER

First draft print - reasonably successful but not quite there yet. Printed in three parts so it'll fit on my printer.

I only put two connectors on so it's a bit wobbly at the joins.

Also, I prefer having an end stop at each end so I'm printing a 600mm one with more connectors and end stops.

#lner #iankirk #7mm #ogauge #modelRailways

OK - sample jig made and I'm pretty pleased with it. The plasticard fits snugly in the recess and there is a 1.5mm ledge at the bottom of the carriage sides for the floor to fit neatly into. Printing a 600MM version overnight now.

Four of these brown bits of carriage sides need to be glued together precisely for each side which is why I've made the jig.

I will share this jig for others to print to help them once I am happy with it.

#lner #iankirk #modelrailways #7mm #ogauge

I've started a couple of prep things.

1. I need a piece of plasticard which will y get glued to the coach side parts to give it strength. There's a piece in the kit which splits into two by hand - one is 13.5mm wide and one 14.5mm wide but I reckon we'll be ok as long as they fit into the jig - we'll see.

2. Books ordered.
2.1 LNER Carriages - Michael Harris
2.2 Chris Bishop Monographs from the LNER society

#modelRailways #iankirk #7mm #ogauge #lner

OK - Isinglass drawing ordered. Now I need to make a jig.

I also contacted Ian Kirk about another thing and he replied straight away - nice bloke.

#modelRailways #iankirk #7mm #ogauge #lner

“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.

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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.

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LNER Gresley A4 Class 4-6-2 Mallard No 4468 - Loco 100 Postcard

https://www.ebid.net/uk/for-sale/lner-gresley-a4-class-4-6-2-mallard-no-4468-loco-100-postcard-244580073.htm

#LNER #Railways #Mallard

LNER No 937 4-6-0 Locomotive, c.1920s - RP Postcard

https://www.ebid.net/uk/for-sale/lner-no-937-4-6-0-locomotive-c-1920s-rp-postcard-244269830.htm

#LNER #Railways

Azuma 🥺

> Ich bin gerade in #LNER 41058 nach Edinburgh #travelynx #trains https://travelynx.de/status/transcaffeine/1776328200?token=7001370-215

LNER Class A4 Streamlined Pacific No 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley - Dennis Postcard

https://www.ebid.net/uk/for-sale/lner-class-a4-streamlined-pacific-no-4498-sir-nigel-gresley-dennis-postcard-243067996.htm

#LNER #Railways

East Coast Main Line, Newark-on-Trent (Nottinghamshire), July 2025

#photography #railwayphotography #documentingplace #documentingspace #newtopographics #nikonphotography #Newark #ECML #LNER #eastcoast #mainline

https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo

https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/

Dyke Bridge, Newark-on-Trent (Nottinghamshire), July 2025

#photography #railwayphotography #documentingplace #documentingspace #newtopographics #ECML #LNER #eastcoast #mainline #nikon #Newark

https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo

https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/

LNER Class K1 5P6F 2-6-0 No 2005 - Steam Classic Postcard

https://www.ebid.net/uk/for-sale/lner-class-k1-5p6f-2-6-0-no-2005-steam-classic-postcard-223635356.htm

#LNER #Railways

LNER Gresley N2 Class 0-6-2T No 4744 - Judges Postcard

https://www.ebid.net/uk/for-sale/lner-gresley-n2-class-0-6-2t-no-4744-judges-postcard-235417379.htm

#LNER #Railways

The Green Engine, East Coast Mainline, Newark-on-Trent, August 2025

#photography #ukphotographer #railwayphotography #documentingbritain #documentingplace #documentingspaces #Eastmidlands #nikon #LNER #ECML
https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo

https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/

Azuma, East Coast Mainline, Newark-on-Trent, August 2025

#photography #ukphotographer #railwayphotography #documentingbritain #documentingplace #documentingspaces #Eastmidlands #nikon #LNER #ECML

https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo

https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/

Azuma, East Coast Mainline, Newark-on-Trent, August 2025

#photography #ukphotographer #railwayphotography #documentingbritain #documentingplace #documentingspaces #Eastmidlands #nikon #LNER #ECML

https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/wvmierlo

https://www.saal-digital.net/profiles/wim_van_mierlo/

I've been ripped off twice this week.

1/2

One by a train company that stayed at 29 minutes late for the two minutes it rolled towards the platform. The official refund site says "We cannot isuue a refund ..." because it's 29 minutes late, not 30. It also happened to someone else I know, some days later. My casual thought is "systemic fraud", and "shall I try to escalate it?"

#LNER #trains #uk #rail

Moving on to England!

I accidentally found the #LNER #firstClass lounge at King's Cross and dashed in, spending my extra 20 min between trains. Quite full, basically just beverages and bisquits (dry and excellent like British humour) available. But a very good alternative to the crowds at the common areas.

LNER to Durham is nice, but going so fast I have to hold on my glass of red wine and drink it as fast as possible to avoid spilling.

#Interrail #TrainTravel #FreeStuff

We encourage all supporters to arrive at The City Ground early ahead of our fixture against Leeds United.

A Remembrance service will take place from 1:50pm, and we invite fans to join us in paying tribute. The Last Post will be followed by a minute’s silence.

We will also be recognising the courage and bravery of our supporters who were caught up in the shocking attack on an LNER train on November 1.

#NFFC #remembrance #WeWillRemember #LNER #TrainAttack

#Eisenbahnliebe im National Railway Museum York, GB.

#LNER
#Mallard
#SirNigelGresley

Gresley Institute named in popular vote http://dlvr.it/TP4rw1 #Doncaster #Infrastructure #LNER #NetworkRail

Gresley Institute named in popular vote http://dlvr.it/TP4rs4 #Doncaster #Infrastructure #LNER #NetworkRail

The thread about the “Galloping Sausage”; promising a lot but delivering a little

On this day (July 31st) in 1930, the curious LNER (London & North Eastern Railway) locomotive No. 10000 left Waverley station in Edinburgh at the head of the up Flying Scotsman. Hush Hush, as it was known, was an experimental prototype, fitted with a high-pressure water tube boiler: technology that ultimately proved more trouble than it was worth.

This engine known as “Hush Hush” on account of the great secrecy that surrounded its design and construction; it was kept covered in sheeting whenever prying eyes were around to try and conceal what secrets lay beneath. Its internal company class name was the more mundane W1. The LNER and its designer hoped that its efficiency would make it the next great thing.From some angles it looked undeniably cool: sleek and furutistic.

From other angles it looked like the mutant offspring of a wide-mouthed frog and a white pudding (it was painted light grey, initially). A great, wallowing, temperamental, steam-powered sausage.

The great technological secrete beneath its sausage-like exterior, and the reason for its curious appearance, was the custom-built water-tube boiler. These sorts of boilers were usually for high-end marine applications, so its construction was contracted out to the Yarrow & Co. shipyard in Glasgow. Without turning this story into a lecture about boiler design, in simple terms a traditional steam locomotive boiler is of the fire-tube type; hot combustion gasses go along tubes through a pressurised tank of water to hear it. By by its nature this structure has many built-in weaknesses where the tubes penetrate the boiler. In a water-tube boiler, it is the small tubes that contain the water, under pressure, heated by combustion gases from the outside. This allowed operated at 450psi vs. the usual 180-200psi of a typical railway fire-tube boiler of its time.

Because it works at a higher pressure, the steam is hotter within a water-tube boiler, therefore its potential do do work is greater. In theory, compared to a lower-pressure boiler, it can produce more power from the same amount of fuel (or the same amount of power for less fuel) and therefore will be more efficient. The theory was all well and good, but at the business end the engineers did not understand how to exploit the high pressure steam in a “compound” system (that is, one where steam is used first at a high pressure to drive one set of pistons and then at lower pressure to drive another, to extract as much of the work from it as possible.)

No. 10000 was the brainchild of the LNER’s Chief Mechanical Engineer, Nigel Gresley; not usually a man associated with making engineering mistakes. Gresley, coincidentally and relevantly for this sites main themes, was an accidental son of Edinburgh: his family were from Derbyshire, but he entered this world early on a visit by his expectant mother to see a gynaecologist in the New Town.

A cross-sectional illustration of “a Unique New Engine” with “a War-Ship Boiler” was printed in the Illustrated London News in January 1930. It shows just how tight a squeeze things were on the inside. One of the only design efficiencies that No. 10000 ended up having was a 14% smaller fire grate than a comparable locomotive.

A water-tube boiler has no steam dome, so that familiar feature of a steam locomotive was missing. To accommodate the unusual size and profile of the water-tube boiler, the engine’s outer casing was carried all the way to the maximum permissible height, with the safety valves and whistles were recessed into the side. The odd-looking front end was designed to scoop air into the casing, to pre-heat it before entering the firebox, and to throw exhaust smoke clear of the cab

With no visible chimney or dome and that big, silvery, pudding of an outer casing, No. 10000 looked odd enough. But as the boiler had to hang further back than usual it needed an extra pair of wheels for support, on a double-articulated rear truck, giving a highly unusual 4-6-2-2 configuration (4 leading wheels on a bogie, 6 driving wheels, 2 trailing wheels on a Cartazzi axle and then a futher 2 wheels trailing on a separate Bissel truck). No. 10000 was never officially named – name plates to christen it “British Enterprise” were optimistically cast – but these were never fitted, and it was probably a good thing on account of the technical headache and operational embarrassment that it turned out to be. As well as “Hush Hush”, the less than flattering nickname of “Galloping Sausage” was unofficially applied.

No. 10000 was tested on the mainline for quite few years, with various tweaks and changes being made to try and improve its performance. In some aspects it showed promise, but these were offset by its heavy coal consumption, high build and running costs, lower power and poor reliability. Its fundamental problem however, was that it was a totally unique design, when every other locomotive on the LNER had a fire-tube boiler; there was reduced commonality and no economy of scale. It was quietly rebuilt with a fire-tube boiler and new outer casing into an approximation of a standard A4 Pacific in 1937 (also designed by Nigel Gresley). In this guise it served the railway for longer than its original form, all the way into British Railways days as No. 60700.

The only major blot on the otherwise unremarkable and reliable service of its second life was an ignominious slow-speed derailment at Peterborough in September 1955 which saw No. 60700 end up sprawled on its side. There were no serious injuries, and the three men on the footplate were thrown clear and unhurt. The damage was not significant and the locomotive was righted, repaired, and put back in service for a further decade before being withdrawn for scrap. Its tender survived into preservation with the A4 Pacific No. 60009 “Union of South Africa“

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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.