#northbritishrailway — Public Fediverse posts

Illicit goings-on beneath the New Town setts: the thread about the life and crimes of the Scotland Street Tunnel

Scotland Street, on the northern firnge of Edinburgh’s Second or Northern New Town; not the grandest or longest such street, but certainly one of the more interesting. But what draws me to it is what you cannot see – the 1,052 yard long tunnel running a few tens of feet beneath its granite setts. Previous threads have looked in detail at the construction, engineering and operation of the tunnel, its terminus at Canal Street Station or tragic accidents during its service life. No, as the title suggests this story is about the various criminal goings-on that it attracted in its short service life from 1847-1868.

Looking south up Scotland Street. CC-by-SA 2.0 Jim Barton via Geograph

Things start getting going in our story in February 1858 when an urgent telegram arrived at the Leith Police station with a description of a man wanted in Aberdeen for thefts and who had fled that city on the steamer Sovereign, bound for Granton.

Advert for the Aberdeen, Leith & Clyde Shipping Co. steamer “Sovereign” in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, 26th June 1858

Two detectives were despatched from Leith to Granton station which was adjacent to the steamer quay. Here they managed to identify their mark but instead of clapping him in irons then and there, they boarded the same compartment on the Edinburgh train as him, and only announced themselves to him once they started heading south towards Scotland Street.

Granton Harbour and Pier, c. 1880, from Grant’s Old & New Edinburgh. The trains in the foreground are running on the railway embankment, Granton Middle Pier, where the station buildings are, lies beyond, with the steamers tied up alongside

They made the suspect “aware of his predicament” but did not handcuff him. At Scotland Street Station their train was detached from the locomotive and attached to the haulage rope which would pull it up the tunnel incline to its destination at Canal Street. With a jerk, the train moved off into the darkness – there was no carriage lighting.

So you can imagine the look of surprise on the detectives’ faces when they emerged into the light at Canal Street Station only to find they were now alone in the compartment! Their man had somehow managed to slip silently out of the carriage in the pitch darkness of the tunnel! After alerting the railway authorities, the detectives trudged off back down the tunnel to search Scotland Street Station. On arriving there and interrogating the staff, it was found that a porter had seen a man emerging from the tunnel who had climbed over a fence, never to be seen again. The police had to be consoled in retrieving their suspect’s luggage, in which the items he had been accused of stealing in Aberdeen were found.

You would think that police accompanying prisoners through the tunnel would have been more careful in future. You’d think, but they weren’t, and in January 1864 a prisoner by the name of Peter Brown managed to pull off the same trick. Brown, (aka John Graham, aka John Farrel, aka Robert Young) had been detained in Larbert a few days previously by Superintendent Gray for the crime of stealing a silver watch, a pair of trousers, a vest and a shirt from the house of Widow McKay in the High Street of Falkirk. He had been cooling his heels in Perth Prison ever since, but was now to be brought to Edinburgh for the purposes of identifying him for other offences. A single officer was to accompany him, who at least took the precaution of handcuffing him. They took the 145PM from Perth, which had to cross the Forth by steamer from Burntisland to Granton, before picking up the train again for the short ride into the city centre via the tunnel. Once again, an unlucky officer emerged at the Canal Street terminus without his charge.

“A watercolour showing an east view of Edinburgh taken from the Scott Monument”, with a train emerging from the Scotland Street Tunnel to the terminus of the railway at Canal Street Station. Beyond lies the station that would grow into Waverley. Princes Street is on the left, Waverley Bridge in the foreground. Joseph Ebsworth, 1847, © Edinburgh Museums & Galleries

He had actually noticed his prisoner missing while in the tunnel but groping around in the dark for him, all he had managed to do was to upset his understandably surprised fellow passengers. Telegraphs were sent off and the policeman ran off down the tunnel in pursuit. Half way back down, the prisoner’s cap was retrieved. Back at Scotland Street Station, a porter once again described seeing a man emerge from the tunnel before existing the station, never to never be seen again. Once again, the Police were left empty handed and with egg on their faces. The Stirling Observer expressed surprise that a felon who was so “peculiarly dull-looking” could have managed to outwit the authorities with such “a daring piece of cleverness.”

Looking up to Scotland Street – marked by the street lamp – from the tunnel portal. A staircase was once fixed to the iron supports on the right. Photo © Self

Thefts were common on the railway. That very same day that the fugitive from Aberdeen had given the Leith Police the slip in the tunnel – Friday 12th February 1858 – James Ross, “a perfect adept in the light-fingered art” plead guilty at the Edinburgh Police Court to pickpocketing eight half-crowns from a lady at the station the previous day; for his efforts he received 60 days hard labour. In July 1859, a woman travelling from Leith to Edinburgh was relieved of £6, 17s 3d from her purse by three “Cockney gentlemen” who joined her in a first class compartment at Bonnington Station and left again in peculiar circumstances at Scotland Street, loudly claiming to all in the carriage that they had bought the wrong tickets and wanted instead to go to Granton. The victim arrived at Canal Street to find her purse empty, and immediately gave a description to the Police. There was a problem with a “Swell Mob” of Cockney pickpockets in Edinburgh that summer and the Police knew where they liked to hang out in the howffs of the West Port. Detectives Youdall and Leadbetter were efficient in their duties, picking up Richard Myars in a “thieves den” before finding John Tonner and James Clark hiding under a bed in their lodging house in the nearby Grassmarket. They had £7 between them, despite previously pleading to the Police that they had insufficient funds to leave the city. For their troubles their £7 was given to the victim in compensation and each got 60 days in the Calton Gaol, before being run out of town.

“The Thieves Den”, an engraving of an 18th century William Hogarth illustration.

In October of that year, a most unusual “crime” took place in the tunnel – the transport of illicit cookies! A Mr Nottman had bought six cookies from Mr Robert Young, the licensee of the refreshment rooms at Canal Street Station and was observed to do this by PC Donald Bain. Nottman and his cookies boarded the train for Scotland Street Station and was followed by PC Bain, followed in fact all the way to his house in Bonnington where he intended to eat said cookies. The consumption of the cookies “off premises” was a clear violation of the Forbes Mackenzie Act under which premises were licensed.

Canal Street Station, with the refreshment rooms on the left and the ticket office on the right. In the background is the North Bridge and in the foreground is the Waverley Bridge. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

The Procurator Fiscal (in Scottish law, the Public Prosecutor), Mr Linton, was keen to enforce this particular act to the full extent of his powers and had Robert Young and Nottman sent before Sheriff Hallard to explain themselves. Despite a good defence by the solicitor Mr Rollo, WS, and good character references, the Sheriff said he had no alternative but to fine Young £1 5s for his crime of selling off-sales cookies (the alternative was 10 days imprisonment!); Nottman escaped with a ticking off. This was the third such conviction within a week in Edinburgh, on Friday October 7th, Bailie Cassels at the Police Court applied the same fine to David Doull of Princes Street for selling “a few penny tarts” and Mr Ridpath of the North British Railway refreshment room for selling “a number of muffins” for consumption off premises.

The northern portal of the tunnel at Scotland Street Station, with a recently-affixed plaque by the National Transport Trust. Photo © Self

This was not the only time the railway found themselves on the receiving end of the Edinburgh Sheriff Court. On this day, November 29th, in 1861 the Edinburgh Evening Courant reported that Sheriff Jameson awarded 5 guineas damages to Mr Robert Riddel, a merchant of Blairpark, Ferry Road. The defendant in the case was the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway company which ran the Scotland Street tunnel. Riddel sued the Railway for their treatment of him on the 6th November when, after buying a 1st Class ticket from Bonnington to Edinburgh with friends, they found the carriages full so they sat instead in 2nd class. Riddel was annoyed that this sort of thing happened too often, and so at Scotland Street station he asked the ticket collector to refund him the difference. When the collector declined, Riddel kept hold of his ticket (he was meant to hand it in) and said he’d take the matter up instead at the Canal Street terminus with a higher authority. The ticket collector was having none of it, fetched the station master and the pair physically ejected Riddel from the train. He was “severely sprained in one of his hands” and detained against his will at Scotland Street before being refused a refund or onward transport. In finding for Riddel, the Sheriff set a precedent that passengers were entitled to a refund if they could not travel in the means which they had paid a ticket for due to a fault of the railway. Riddel let it be known that he was contributing his damages to the relief fund for the victims of the recent “Heave Awa Land” disaster.

Our last “crime” goes back to the previous year, a “laughable incident” that was widely reported in July 1858 under the tongue in cheek heading of “A Merchant’s Last ‘Stroke of Business’“. It involved an unfortunate but persistent woman of “prepossessing appearance“, one who ultimately had the last laugh. Our heroine arrived in Edinburgh from London in early July by steamer. Her purpose was marriage to “a commercial gentlemen belonging to this city“, their courtship having taken place by correspondence. She had with her all her possessions and with these boarded the train for Scotland Street where she was met by her lover.

Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard have a Brief Encounter out of a railway carriage window. Still from the 1945 film. Carlton-ITC/LFI CFD0079-Brief-S001

“After many tender words were said” her fiancée went to retrieve her luggage from the van only to find it was empty. Both were astonished and after an hour of enquiries the man began to start having doubts about his bride and came to believe she was not whom she claimed to be. He imagined he was to marry a comfortably off woman, but now feared she had nothing to her name besides the clothes she stood up in. They had planned to be married then and there but he managed to put her off and “excuse himself” on account of his business arrangements. His jilted bride-to-be retreated back up the tunnel to the City to make more enquiries at Canal Street and find herself a hotel. From here, she sent word to her lover to please come and join her when he was done with work. But he never did. Distressed by her lack of spouse and lack of luggage, she returned to the station and was advised to take the train back down the tunnel to the steamer quay at Granton in case it was there. Imagine her surprise when at Scotland Street she saw all her belongings on the platform!

Disembarking from the carriage, she hurried up the stairs and down again to the other platform. To her horror she found not only her luggage but also her late fiancée, “waiting evidently to proceed on a long journey” and directing a porter to load her things onto a train for Leith! “He could make no answer when interrogated by the lady“, being “completely dumbfounded” at seeing her. In the most persuasive terms, she made him agree to “put off his journey” and marched him and her luggage back up the hill to Edinburgh and married him on the spot! His “business speculation over”, he instead was obliged to “retire to spend the honeymoon in the quiet seclusion of the country“.

A Victorian Couple on the Street, Girl’s Own Paper, 1883.

The Scotland Street Tunnel soldiered on for a few years more but its new owners, the North British Railway, couldn’t wait to get rid of it when the acquired the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway. They built and opened a diversionary line and closed the tunnel on May 22nd 1868 with all traffic through it ceasing immediately. The tunnel spent the next 20 years doing nothing and was largely forgotten about, but popped up in the newspapers every now and again. Commander J. C. R. Johnston wrote to the Scotsman in April 1870 suggesting that it be used for horse carriages and carts, to bypass the gradients of the New Town, an idea still suggested for cycling and walking.

Letter to the Scotsman, 20th April 1870

Ten years after closure Robert Kerr & Co., a whisky broker and blender in Leith, announced in the Scotsman that they intended to use the tunnel as a bonded warehouse for Wine and Spirits. Nothing came of this idea either. It would be almost another decade before a permanent use was found for the tunnel – from 1887 to 1902 the Scottish Mushroom Co. used it as an industrial-scale mushroom farm! Two tons of mushrooms a week could be harvested (when mould wasn’t killing them off).

“A Tunnel of Mushroom”, the only photo I have seen showing the old platform buildings at Scotland Street Station or an engine entering it. Photo courtesy Old Weird Scotland.

The mushrooms grew on immense quantities of manure which was hauled straight into the tunnel by a steam engine on the old rails. Workers deep inside and working in the darkness with only the flicker of candles banked it up in huge piles as mushroom beds. The railway yard at Scotland Street was used as a manure transfer, storage and mixing depot. Horse manure was the main source – it came straight from Piershill Cavalry Barracks and also from the council’s manure depots where the “scaffies” deposited their collections.

“Removing Street Refuse”, London street sweepers at work in c. 1900 cleaning up horse manure. From Living London, vol. 2, 1902

The manure was mixed when it was at the peak of fermentation, resulting in “a strong effluvia aris[ing]“. As you can imagine this did not go down too well with the residents of Scotland Street and their neighbours. The city’s energetic Public Health officer, Dr Henry Littlejohn, was also alert to the danger it posed and had the midden relocated to Warriston, 500 yards from human habitation. After these initial teething troubles, the Scottish Mushroom Co settled down to business and once again the tunnel faded from popular consciousness. And that might have been that for our story had it not been for a rather amusing and farcical occurrence in 1889.

In November of that year it was announced that Arthur James Balfour, the Irish Secretary, was due to attend a banquet dinner of Unionists and Tories in the Waverley Market on December 5th.

Arthur Balfour in 1890. Glasgow University collection, PD.

Balfour was from the Maitland Balfour family of Whittingehame, East Lothian, and a distant relation of the Balfours of Pilrig and enjoyed significant local interest and popularity. The organisers could not find an establishment large enough to host the event and so had turned to the city’s covered fruit and vegetable market, with fully three quarters taken over for the banquet. The same could not be said of Balfour’s popularity back in Ireland where his ruthless actions against Irish Nationalists earned him the moniker “Bloody Balfour“. The authorities therefore feared the dinner at Waverley would be targeted by Nationalist reprisals and become “a modern Guy Fawkes“. They feared a bomb would be smuggled into the undercroft of the Waverley Market, or even worse, into the Scotland Street Tunnel itself. Such a device it was said “would extinguish Unionism and Toryism in Scotland perpetually” given “every member of any note” was to be present.

Waverley Market, 1885, by George Morham. The man in white trousers is a “scaffie” or street sweeper, the word comes from “scavenger”, which is the caption written above the title of the photo. © Edinburgh City Libraries

A significant police detail was therefore imported to provide protection for Balfour and the dinner, and set about combing the venue for signs of anything untoward. It is important to note that these were not local officers and so were naive about local matters. The police were able to obtain duplicate keys to the gates of the tunnel at its southern end, and entered to search. They neglected to tell the North British Railway what they were up to and set off down the dark tunnel with only a few lamps to guide them. The police didn’t understand what the funky piles along the tunnel were. They boldly pressed on down but their courage failed them when some of the men working the mushroom beds suddenly popped their heads up from behind the manure banks and enquired “Wha’s there?” The officers fled back up the tunnel and could not be convinced to return until it was explained to them what went on down there those days. A thorough search was made of the operation, but all that could be found was manure, mushrooms and the “spawn” used to sew the beds

The only illustration I know of that shows the Scotland Street Tunnel “in operation” dates from about 20 years after its closure, when it was being used as a mushroom farm. The proprietors laid a track some way into the tunnel to bring in the manure on which the mushrooms were grown. The scale is definitely subject to artistic licence. From “Mushrooms for the Million, 1884

The Evening News reported that “the mushroom men were left laughing both at the timidity of their visitors and the fruitlessness of their visit”. Balfour’s dinner passed off uneventful with a banquet for 3,000, “1,000 ladies in the galleries” and seats for 8-10,000 public spectators.

“Graphic” newspaper, December 14th 1889

You may wonder why I’m writing about the Scotland Street Tunnel yet again. Well I do have an ulterior motive, as my learned friend Leslie Hills just so happens to have a new book out now about two centuries of life above ground in Scotland Street. Most conveniently, it’s out in all good bookshops and is launched on Friday 1st December! “10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence“. If you are reading this and you like my threads about Edinburgh and Leith history, then you probably like going down the sort of historical rabbit holes and off on tangents, so you’re sure to like Leslie’s book too as it will take you from a door on Scotland Street and around the world! I find a pleasing symmetry that Leslie’s book details what was going on just a few tens of feet above the tunnel at the same time as the shennanigans I have just been relating to you were going on tens of feet below the people in her book. Be there! I was very honoured to be able to contribute in a small way to this book and am only too pleased to commend it to you too.

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The Innocent: the thread about Scotland’s oldest railway tunnel and how it revolutionised the city

Writing on the topic of the Scotland Street Tunnel, it’s hard not to stumble into the rabbit hole of railway tunnels and look at another, older, rope-worked incline tunnel in Edinburgh – that of St Leonard’s – better known these days by the moniker The Innocent.

At 560 yards, it’s just a little over half the length of Scotland Street and its 1-in-30 gradient is a little less severe than the latter’s 1-in-27. It’s also less roomy, with a 19½ x 14¾ feet cross section vs. 24 x 24 feet. Like Scotland Street, it was worked by gravity downhill and by a static steam engine at the top of the incline to haul waggons uphill by rope. It has a reasonable claim to be Scotland’s oldest railway tunnel – Dundee’s 330 yard long Law Tunnel was completed over a year before it, but traffic started running through the Innocent a few months before that on the Dundee & Newtyle Railway.

Bartholomew Post Office Map, 1865, showing the Innocent Tunnel and St Leonard’s Station to the left. The colours represent municipal electoral wards. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

First things first – the formal name for the railway was the Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway so what’s with it being known as the Innocent Railway ? One frequently repeated explanation is that nobody died, or was seriously injured, during the railway’s operational life. Let’s clear that up now – people did die and others were injured on this railway (more on that later), so that’s not where the name comes from. Rather, it comes from how “innocently” backwards the railway, with its plodding horse-hauled traction and ramshackle facilities seemed compared to the rival steam-powered “whizzing, whistling, sorting, buffing and blowing railways and having one’s imagination exasperated by their frantic speed“. It was in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal of January 1846 where the name first appeared in print, as a gentle nickname. By this time the railway was 15 years old but already belonged firmly to a previous generation and had recently purchased by the bigger and more modern North British Railway.

Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, No. 105, January 1846

Oddly, even Chambers gets it wrong, sayings “[it] never breaks bones” and “a friend of ours calls it ‘The Innocent Railway’, as being so peculiar for its indestructive character“. Tell that to the young woman who fell between two waggons on Saturday 3rd March 1838 and had her skull fatally crushed! Or to the passengers of the Portobello stagecoach who, on Monday 10th August 1840, had an empty train of waggons collide with their conveyance on a level crossing, injuring a number of them.

FATAL ACCIDENT – Caledonian Mercury – 5th March 1838

Construction wasn’t incident free either. Initial borings of the tunnel commenced at Duddingston in July 1827 and appear to have proceeded steadily and without hitch until February 1829 when a workman was killed and 8 received a variety of injuries – many serious – when 8 yards of masonry archwork, 30 tons of stone blocks, collapsed on them. Robert Inglis lost his life, leaving a widow and two young children; Robert Mercer had his right leg amputated by Mr Liston at the Royal Infirmary; James Gilmour suffered fractured ribs. So the Innocent may have had a lesser rate of incident than its competitors, but it’s evidently not true that there were none and that no serious injuries were incurred or lives lost during its operations. However they were obviously proud of their safety record, as its called out in an 1832 advert:

“Without the slightest semblance of accident”, The Scotsman – 1st September 1832

The Innocent opened for business in 1831 and the Edinburgh Evening Courant reported in August that year that it was then “in full operation” with trains of waggons “re-issuing twelve to fifteen tons of coals, with the speed of a mail coach” as they came out of the tunnel on the haulage rope.

Coal was the reason the railway was built – to bring the black riches from the Midlothian pits around Millerhill, Sheriffhall and south of Dalkeith, and from a branch to Cowpits in East Lothian, into the city of Edinburgh, at a depot in St. Leonards. A further branch extended to the harbour at Fisherrow for import or export of coal – this harbour soon proved not to be a useful destination and so the route was extended on a new branch to the Port of Leith. To the south, the Marquess of Lothian would build an extension across the South Esk river as far as his pits at Arniston at significant personal expense and the Duke of Buccleuch took a branch from Dalkeith to his pits around Smeaton.

The 1825 survey of the route by its engineer, James Jardine, highlighted for clarity. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

In the mid-1820s, coal could come into Edinburgh either from Lanarkshire – by the Union Canal – from Fife or Northumberland – through the Port of Leith – or locally from East and Midlothian – by cart. However, the winter weather frequently strangled supplies by all 3 of these channels and as a result the growing city frequently suffered from winter fuel shortages, as deliveries dwindled and prices increased. What was needed was a more reliable and cheaper way to bring local coal into the city – a railway was thought to be such a way. Interested gentlemen issued a prospectus for the Mid Lothian Railway from Newbattle to Edinburgh in the winter of 1824. They forecast the best Midlothian coal could be sold in Edinburgh at 8s per ton if brought in by the railway, 40% cheaper when compared with the then market rate of 11s 6d per ton. It was therefore unsurprising that the Lothian “Coal Lords” were all early supporters – Archibald Primrose, 4th Earl of Rosebery; Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch; Sir John Hope of Pinkie, 11th Baronet; Francis Wemyss Charteris Douglas, 8th Earl of Wemyss & 4th Earl of March; and John Kerr, 7th Marquess of Lothian.

The Mid Lothian Railway soon became the Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway of the above map. It re-used some of the trackbed of an even older horse-drawn railway, the Edmonstone Waggonway, which had opened for bsiness in August 1818. This line connected pits at Millerhill with a depot at Little France on the lands of Lt. Col. John Wauchope of Edmonstone & Niddrie Marischal. The Innocent threatened Wauchope’s older route and he successfully objected to its 1825 Parliamentary Bill. When a second Bill succeeded in 1826 he changed his mind and came to an agreement with the promoters. This allowed the use of some of his existing trackbed, to have his pits connected to the new railway and also to be paid a share of all the coal being carried across his lands. As a result, the Edmonstone Waggonway was surplus to requirements and was gone by 1831 when the Innocent commenced operations. Edmonstone Coal was soon being advertised for sale at St. Leonards, “direct from the pit head“.

Looking up the “Innocent Tunnel” in 2009, with the modern cycle path laid down its centre. CC-by-NC 2.0, Peter Reed via Flickr

The Innocent found itself a roaring success and was soon carrying over 300 tons of coal a day, all of it (except through the tunnel) by horse power alone. The colliers all provided their own horses and waggons, relieving the railway of having to oversee this aspect of operations. In 1836, a newspaper as far off as the Londonderry Standard reported that “the immense load” of a train weighing 54 tons was moved a distance of 6 miles by just 2 horses.

A Waggonway – at Tanfield on Tyneside. The horse provided the means to move the waggon on the level or uphill. Going downhill it was tethered at the rear and the waggonman would control the speed of descent using the large wooden brake lever. The Coal Waggon – Northumberland Archives Ref. ZMD 78/14

But it wasn’t just a case of bringing the coal into the city, the railway also promised to revolutionise how the city’s fuel supply was sold and distributed. At this time, people bought their coal from a preferred merchant and would specify the quality and origin, which depended on the particular pit and seam it was cut from. Some coals produced more light, some more heat, some burned with less smoke, some were cheaper, etc. These were sold like brands, e.g. the Marquess of Lothian’s Great Main Coal or Sir John Hope’s Craighall Jewel Coal, but customers were reliant on the Carters to deliver it to them and had to trust that they were getting what they had paid for. The railway would break the stranglehold of the Carters, who were widely thought to be overpriced and dishonest, selling coal of dubious quality and volumes on the side, and selling direct to the public.

Banner of the Incorporated Trade of the Carters of Leith. © Edinburgh City Libraries

The railway promised only to supply coal from named and trusted pits (those of the Lothian Coal Lords who backed it, naturally) and hand-picked a selected number of coal merchants to handle the trade from its St. Leonards depot. Neither the railway nor their merchants actually had any stores of coal of their own at the depot, these were the property of the customer’s chosen Collier so it came direct from their stocks. However the company employed a “Weigher“, Robert Gibb, whose job it was to ensure that the weight and type of coal that left the yard matched the customer order; signed and sealed.

Notice in the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directory, 1832-33, explaining the operation of the Innocent’s coal sale operation to customers.

oGibb soon proved that the Carters were indeed swindling customers and delivering inferior quality and underweight shipments, catching them red handed. He followed a Carter who had had accidentally left his paperwork behind at the depot and watched as a lady in Alva Street took delivery of the load. Making enquiries with her, he found that she had a receipt showing she had paid for 20cwt of the Duke of Hamilton’s Great Lanarkshire Coal from the canal, but he knew from his paperwork that the cart had delivered 18cwt of Sir John Hope’s Cowpits Coal from the railway: the Carter had swapped the paperwork over. The railway was quick to act and took out notices in the newspapers and the Post Office Directory to let it be known that their officers would be following and watching the Carters and that customers should only accept coals with a Weigher’s certificate signed and stamped by Gibb himself. They also let it be known that the dishonest Carter had been turned over to the Sheriff and that any others caught cheating would never again be allowed to transport railway coal.

Caution to the Public Against Fraud in Coals – Edinburgh Evening Courant, 31st March 1832

To add further checks against fraud, the Weigher’s certificate would be marked with the time of dispatch and customers were to reject any coal delivered more than an hour after that time. This meant it was unlikely that there had been time to adulterate the load. Customers were also instructed to under no circumstances to allow the carter to keep the certificate after delivery, in case he should try use it again. Any one suspecting foul play was invited to inspect the Weigher’s register at the St. Leonards yard. The Railway was thereby guaranteeing both the quality and weight of the coal received, “to secure to the consumer what he has hitherto been little accustomed to, a knowledge of what kind of coal he buys, and of what price he really pays for it“. And with that, the Innocent Railway had totally disrupted the Edinburgh coal market – forever and for the better. The system was soon further improved, by contracting the management of the sale and delivery of coal to one Michael Fox, one of the line’s original engineers. He promised that all deliveries would be made in his own carts, “always being of the best quality and full weight“.

Michael Fox’s advert for railway coal. The Scotsman – 1st September 1832

The railway – or rather Michael Fox again – was also quick to catch on that people would pay to ride along the rails as passengers and that they would bring in additional revenue. Starting in June 1832, he put a carriage on the rails and advertised it at 6d per passenger thus introducing the passenger train to Edinburgh. This was his own initiative and a runaway success, the Railway ended up buying it off him in 1836. His service carried 150,000 passengers in its first year and brought in revenue of £4,000. As a passenger railway, per track mile, this made it busier than the steam-hauled Liverpool & Manchester Railway. By September that year, Fox was advertising a timetabled service between St. Leonards, Sheriffhall and Fisherrow, with inside and outside seats (9d and 6d respectively) and that he had winter-proofed the former to “render them dry and safe from the effects of the weather“.

RAILWAY COACH – Edinburgh Evening Courant – 4th June 1832

Michael Fox was obviously something of a serial entrepreneur – in 1835 he was advertising “swimmers’ specials”, trains from St. Leonards that would take bathers to Portobello or Seafield to take the waters. As far as I’m aware, nobody ever troubled to make an illustration of the Innocent Railway at work, so this double-decker horse-drawn rail carriage will have to do.

Engraving of a horse-hauled railway carriage crossing a river

oWhen the technically more advanced North British Railway pushed south from Edinburgh to Berwick, the Innocent at first objected then allowed itself to be bought for the princely sum of £113,000. The NBR ripped up the horse-drawn “Scotch Gauge” Innocent and relaid it as a Standard Gauge steam-powered railway in 1847. They also took on the Marquess of Lothian’s railway as far as Gorebridge and rebuilt this in a similar fashion, thereby adding the adding the first push south of the railway that would eventually become the Waverley Route to Carlisle. The Innocent remained open until 1968 as an important but overlooked branch line into the city for coal, brewery and warehousing traffic. It was steam worked until almost the end, the old J35 engines “manfully struggling up the gradient“, sometimes taking multiple attempts to reach the top. “If they avoided asphyxiation in the hell hole, the crews were rewarded with a good dram from the bond“. The route that they followed is now a popular walking and cycle route, officially known as the Innocent Railway.

A J35 locomotive making the run uphill for the Innocent Tunnel. This was its second attempt, having stalled on the first.

As a footnote, the Innocent may not have been so deserving of that name if its plans to tunnel its way north into the city centre had ever come to anything. One option was a 900 yard tunnel emerging in Holyrood Park, running on the surface from there, the other a monster 2,200 yard bore emerging at Waverley Station from the south – a great “what if” of Edinburgh transport history.

Early Edinburgh railways. The Edinburgh & Dalkeith (Innocent) in light blue, the Edinburgh & Glasgow in green, the North British in brown and the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton in Yellow.

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The thread about the building of the Scotland Street tunnel, a challenging – and occasionally fatal – engineering endeavour

This thread was originally written and published in September 2023.

In this thread from the other day I covered why Bellevue House in the centre of Drummond Place was demolished so as to allow the Scotland Street Tunnel to run directly beneath it. There’s a lot been written about the Tunnel: some of it’s even true! Despite a service life of just over 20 years and despite being defunct as a transport route for over 150 years, it still captivates the local imagination. The 1,052 yard long tunnel climbs from its entrance beneath Scotland Street to its terminus at the long gone “Canal Street Station” (beneath the Waverley Market) at a significant gradient of 1-in-27, directly beneath the axis of the New Town streets of Scotland Street, Dublin Street and St. Andrew Street so as not to undermine any buildings. But have you ever stopped to wonder how it was built?

An Edinburgh & Northern Railway map of c. 1849 with the short section south of the Forth, that ran under the New Town beyond Scotland Street, highlighted.

The tunnel was planned by the Edinburgh, Leith & Newhaven Railway, which soon changed its name to the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton when the terminus on the Forth shifted to the latter harbour. Within a few years, this small railway was absorbed by the larger (but as-yet unbuilt) Edinburgh & Northern Railway in and changed its name one last time to the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee in 1849 to better reflect the destinations it planned to connect.

When it came to construction, it wasn’t simply a case of starting at one end and digging towards the other, or even trying to meet in the middle from both. No, in fact they dug from both ends and also sunk 5 shafts along the route and dug out from all, at once. The process was to dig a narrow guide mine or drift , 6 x 6 feet wide and tall, linking all the shafts together and then widen that out into the 24 x 24 feet tunnel section and line it. The aerial view below shows the locations of these shafts, from the southern edge of St. Andrew Square (top right of image) to the southern edge of the Drummond Place garden (bottom left of image).

Google Earth image of Edinburgh’s northern New Town, overlaid with the route of the Scotland Street Tunnel and the shafts sunk along it during construction.

The shafts are not spaced equidistant along the route but are concentrated in the central section between Drummond Place and St. Andrew Square. This is because of the underlying geology; the hardest rocks to dig through are located here. From the northern portal and under Scotland Street to the north of Drummond Place was easy going through sand, clay and gravel but beyond this they struck multiple bands of sandstone, freestone, hard freestone, very hard freestone, whinstone, hard sandstone and blaes (mudstone and shale). Beyond St. Andrew square, going got easier again as the freestone is interspersed with multiple bands of clay. An excellent geological section map is available on Canmore, but the terms of its licensing don’t allow me to reproduce it here. So I went one better and re-drew it and re-coloured it to make it clearer for you.

Section of the Scotland Street Tunnel showing geology, re-drawn from the engineer’s original. © Self

The sources tell you the tunnel was constructed between 1844-47, but the newspapers confirm that the drift was actually started by the contractor James Mitchell (of Ross & Mitchell, who was father in law to James Gowans of Rockville) in February 1843 when the company was still known as the Edinburgh, Leith & Newhaven Railway. It was largely completed by February 1844, with the exception of the hardest section beneath Drummond Place and Abercromby Place. Much of the ground that was cut through here was water bearing and drainage was a problem before the whole drift was completed. A particular difficulty, which you can see in the above diagram, was the strata being cut through were thrusting upwards at an angle of around 20-30 degrees to the tunnel and so formed “walls” which held back the water. When the miners breached these, they could suddenly and unexpectedly release the water built up in the next layer. To counter this, the contractors bored out “jumper holes” (pilot holes) ahead of the excavations. When the jumper hole breached a geological wall and struck water, this could then be tapped off and drained away in a controlled manner before the whole drift advanced into the next strata.

19th century railway tunnel excavations – note this does not specifically show the Scotland Street Tunnel, but is one of a roughly equivalent scale and overall appearance © Science Photo Library Limited 2023

This approach was quite successful, but disaster struck early on Friday 29th November 1844 when the nightshift workmen of No. 3 Shaft, digging away below the vicinity of Albany Place, bored out the jumper hole off the planned angle in error and breached a significant subterranean pocket of water which flooded the workings. This shouldn’t actually have been a surprise, the Thursday shift had noticed unusual springs of water in the workings and one of the miners had insisted to his mates that they were digging off of the intended route. Mr Mitchell, the contracting engineer, was informed, and made known his intention to go down with the morning shift at 6AM, to inspect the workings for himself. He asked the workmen to call him before they went down, however when the shift arrived they workmen called not on Mr Mitchell the engineer, but his brother Peter Mitchell, who was employed as a superintendent “but was not conversant in the business of mining“.

Instead of getting his brother, Peter Mitchell took it upon himself to do the inspection and went down with the gang. A short time later, a 14 year old boy – Jack – was being lowered into the shaft and was almost at the bottom when he heard “a loud roar of thunder” and yelled in a panic to be hauled back to the surface. Jack only just made it to the surface before a “huge wave came surging up the shaft” behind him and rose to a height of 80 feet, before “falling back again… almost as quickly as it had risen“. A second explosion of water occurred near the entrance to Broughton Markets out of No. 4 shaft, this one caused by the compression of the air in the tunnel by the flooding finding a route out and propelling the water before it. The basements in this area were flooded up to a depth of 4 feet. Once the initial torrents had subsided, the men at the surface found the drift and shafts were flooded and choked up with rocks, clay and debris from the onrush of water. The majority of the water however drained down and out of the tunnel mouth at Scotland Street “where it flooded the terminus of the completed portion of the railway to a considerable extent“: for a short period, the Canonmills Loch resurrected itself.

Canonmills by Mary Webster, 1836. This view looks from approximately where the tunnel portal is, across the Canonmills Haugh (meadow) towards the ancient loch.

The men on the surface soon followed the receding water down the shaft to look for their mates. A ganger – Erskine – and a miner, Blair from Liberton – were soon found, “as might be expected, quite dead“. The body of another miner – Philips – would not be recovered until later. Tragically, he and Blair should not have even been there, their relief had overslept and were still putting their working clothes on on the surface when the disaster happened. Philips wife “resorted to the scene in the course of the forenoon and her wild shrieks and cries exhibited a spectacle to touch the coldest heart“. His body was found at around 3PM that day and that of Peter Mitchell, who should never have gone down the mine, was found at 4PM. Their bodies had been washed down the tunnel and were stopped beneath Drummond Place by a barrier of rock that had been left across the drift to help control the flow of water down the hill.

A public subscription was raised for the “families of all these poor men” who (with the exception of Mitchell the superintendent) would be “left destitute” by the loss of the breadwinner. The Edinburgh Evening Courant implored the directors of the railway to contribute generously.

The tunnel was finally completed and ready in mid-April 1847, when the company was known as the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton Railway. Captain Coddington, RE of the Railway Board inspected it and gave it the all clear on 10th April. It opened on Monday 17th May after “the most formidable difficulties“, on the same day as the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway opened their extension from Haymarket to a (for now temporary) terminus underneath the new Waverley Bridge.

A watercolour painting by Joseph Ebsworth was completed a couple of months later, and from its vantage point of the Scott Monument we can clearly see a train emerging from the Scotland Street tunnel into Canal Street Station below Princes Street. There is a further thread here about that station, if you fancy reading some more on the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton Railway. The tunnel was too steep for the railway engines of the day when it was built, so trains were hauled up it on a rope by a static winding engine and ran downhill by gravity from Canal Street to Scotland Street, were a locomotive was attached for the onward journey to Granton or Leith.

“A watercolour showing an east view of Edinburgh taken from the Scott Monument”, Joseph Ebsworth, 1847, © Edinburgh Museums & Galleries

Despite the effort of its construction, the tunnel ended up having a very short life and was closed to traffic only 21 years after it opened. You can read more about the various crimes and illicit goings on that the tunnel attracted during this time in this thread. In this time it also gained a reputation for accidents and the newspapers record many – it proved particularly dangerous for the men employed to work it:

• In December 1853, Thomas Cleghorn, a railway guard, was killed instantly in the tunnel when he struck his head on the wall after leaning out of the luggage van in which he was riding.
• In August 1855, a carriage left unattended at the top of the tunnel and without its brakes applied, ran down the incline and collided with a passenger train, causing multiple injuries, some severe. The shunter, Thomas Wells, pleaded guilty to “culpable neglect of duty” and was imprisoned for 9 months.
• In September 1857, a goods train emerging from the foot of the tunnel at Scotland Street did not stop and ran into the back of a slow-moving coal train. The driver of the latter train jumped from his engine but forgot to shut off the steam and apply the brakes in his panic. His engine ran off towards Granton at a speed of 30mph and crashed into a train of carriages which was fortunately almost empty, demolishing the lot. The few passengers on board had already jumped clear when the runaway train was seen to be approaching. The Glasgow Sentinel newspaper recorded that at Scotland Street station the damage was limited to 2 barrels of whisky, which broke and their “mountain dew scattered on the ground“
• In October 1859, John Adam, a railway labourer, was fatally injured after being struck by a train coming out of the tunnel. He had gone to fetch a lamp to work with and found himself caught between the train and the tunnel wall.
• In October 1859 also, the haulage cable snapped at 930AM in the morning, preventing use of the tunnel for the whole day.
• In June 1863, James Samuel, a carriage driver employed to move coaches around Canal Street Station by horse traction, caught his foot in the mechanism of a turntable and was run over by a train coming out of the tunnel on the haulage rope. His injuries proved fatal.
• In July 1865, a train of 13 carriages, 2 trucks and 3 brake wagons was moving downhill when it separated into two portions. The forward portion moved ahead, but was then hit by the rear portion when it began to slow as the brakemen, in the pitch dark, could not even see that the train had separated. There were no serious injuries.
• In September 1867, a train ran away down the hill from Canal Street Station and overshot the station at Scotland Street at the foot of the tunnel, the brakemen – one on every third carriage – had to resort to applying the emergency “drags”, stout pieces of timber that were shoved into the spokes of the wheels to bring them to an immediate (and violent) stop. There were no serious injuries.
• In November 1867, William Reid, a brakeman, was killed when he jumped from his train at the foot of the tunnel and fell, being run over by his own vehicle.

The only illustration I know of that shows the Scotland Street Tunnel “in operation” dates from about 20 years after its closure, when it was being used as a mushroom farm. The proprietors laid a track some way into the tunnel to bring in the manure on which the mushrooms were grown. The scale is definitely subject to artistic licence. From “Mushrooms for the Million, 1884

Ultimately, the tunnel was never a practical transport solution. Beyond its lack of engine traction, the platforms at Canal Street station were far too short to allow longer trains, and were at 90 degrees to the larger Edinburgh & Glasgow and North British Railway station, making connections clumsy and impractical. In 1863 the line’s then owners, the North British Railway, gained powers to construct a new line diverting around the tunnel via Abbeyhill. Construction began in 1865 and it opened (and the tunnel closed) on May 22nd, 1868. It has been abandoned as a transport corridor ever since, but has seen use variously as a car garage, industrial mushroom farm, air raid shelter and emergency railway control room for at least some the intervening years. Every so often a plan is mooted to re-open either as a tram or metro route, or as a cycleway.

Closure notice of the tunnel, advertised in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, 21st May 1868

Footnote. In February 2023, the Broughton Spurtle local newspaper broke the story that Dublin Street was subsiding – a “sinkhole” hole had appeared in the middle of the road. Coincidentally, this was right on top of No. 4 shaft, the one that flooded Broughton Markets in the 1844 disaster.

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.
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Rail Crash at Ratho, 1917: the thread about “an unfortunate illustration of the danger of taking things for granted”

This thread was originally written and posted on January 3rd 2023.

On this day, January 3rd, in 1917, a tragic railway accident occurred on the Edinburgh to Glasgow mainline of the North British Railway (NBR) when a packed express train crashed into the back of an engine manoeuvring across its path just outside Ratho Station. As a result, 12 people lost their lives and a further 46 were injured – the 8th most deadly railway accident in Scottish history.

The case is an unfortunate illustration of the danger of “taking things for granted.”

Col. J. W. Pringle, Board of Trade Accident Summary

The accident took place after the traditional Scottish two day New Year bank holiday; the principal holiday of the year for most people and much more important at that time as a public celebration than Christmas. As such, the railways were packed with people heading home after a brief visit to friends and family in other towns and cities to bring in the bells.

Ratho (Upper) Station in 1905, looking towards the direction of Bathgate and Glasgow © Edinburgh City Libraries

In order to understand what went wrong and why, we first have to understand the layout of the railway at Ratho. The Edinburgh & Glasgow mainline runs through Ratho Station, which has platforms on it known as Ratio Upper. A single track branch to South Queensferry (via Kirkliston and Dalmeny) branches off of the mainline just to the east at Queensferry Junction, serving a platform known as Ratho Lower.

Layout of the railways around Ratho Station, OS 1:25 inch survey, 1893. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

In accordance with British railway parlance, the line towards Edinburgh (the principal destination on the NBR) was the “up” line, and that towards Glasgow and Bathgate was the “down” line. The single line South Queensferry branch split into a down and up loop just before the junction on either side of the signal box which controlled it. This allows trains to pass before heading to/from the single line branch, and allowed the engine of a passenger train to “run around” its carriage, i.e switch from pulling it at one end to the other. However, the junction was poorly designed, and the only way to undertake this manoeuvre was to move across both sets of mainline tracks before returning around the other side of the loop.

Layout of the Queensferry Junction, OS 1:1250 survey, 1944. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

This risky manoeuvre had six basic stages and was further complicated by the fact there were no fixed signals to control it – instructions were given by hand, lamp and shouted voice signals between the signal box and any engine crew. This had rarely been a serious issue up until this point in the 51 year history of the line given traffic was so light, with only 2 or 3 passenger trains a day on the branch.

The afternoon of January 3rd 1917 was stormy but clear. At 435PM, the local train from South Queensferry to Ratho Lower departed the latter station as “empty stock” (no passengers) and pulled up at the Queensferry Junction signal box in the Down Loop (orange on the map above) as it should have done to commence “running around” its carriages. The engine driver was John Ramsay, 52 years old with 38 years railway service, 26 as an engine driver. Ramsay was very experienced but this was only his third day working the South Queensferry Branch. The signalman was John Philp, 51 years old and again very experienced, with 24 of his 26 years railway service being served in this very box.

The engine was No. 421 and was also very experienced, having been in service with the company for 44 years. It was a 4-4-0 (4 leading, 4 driving and no trailing wheels) tender engine. It had recently been demoted from working Dundee to Edinburgh trains and was based at Thornton in Fife; both crew were Dundee men.

NBR No. 423, of the same type as No. 421

What should have happened next, and what driver Ramsay had done for only the previous 2 days, was that the empty coaches should have been uncoupled outside the signal box and left in the Down Loop. Ramsay should then have awaited instruction (verbally or by hand or lamp) from signalman Philp to proceed onto the Down Mainline “light engine”, i.e. not pulling a load.

Steps 1 and 2 of the “run around” procedure at Queensferry Junction

At step 3, driver Ramsay should have moved ahead onto the Up Mainline, there was a small trackside indicator signal that gave him permission to do this. Once his engine was clear of these points, as step 4 he would then reverse back along the Up Mainline and into the Up Loop, on the opposite side from the waiting empty carriages.

Steps 3 and 4 of the “run around” procedure at Queensferry Junction

The final two steps of the operation were (5) to move completely through the Up Loop and back onto the branch, before (6) reversing once again back to the empty carriages and re-coupling at the other side. The train would then wait here for an hour before forming the evening service from Ratho Lower back to South Queensferry.

Steps 5 and 6 of the “run around” procedure at Queensferry Junction

It was Philp’s intention that the local train would now wait outside his box and await his instruction. Seventeen minutes previously, at 418PM, the packed ten coach express service for Glasgow Queen Street left Edinburgh Waverley. It was pulled by No. 874, “Dunedin“, a 4-4-2 Atlantic type express engine. These were the pride of the company, its biggest and most powerful engines, and were only 11 years old. Driver Moffat and fireman Hyslop were on the footplate and would stop only once, at Haymarket, before running non-stop to Glasgow.

An NBR Atlantic of the same class as No. 874

At 430PM, the signalbox at Gogar Station, 2⅓ miles to the east, telegraphed Philp to inform him that the express was approaching; he acknowledge and accepted it into his section of line. A minute later, he changed his signals on the mainline to give the driver of it a clear run through his section and into the next. At 433PM he received the “train in section” confirmation from Gogar; the express was now unstoppably approaching Queensferry Junction at 45mph. Two minutes later, the local arrived outside his box and stopped, having been shown a white hand lamp by Philp which was the accepted signal to move forwards from the branch. Fireman Cairns of the local train got down from the footplate and uncoupled the carriages. At this point, it was Philp’s understanding that the local train would now await him to give a further hand and lamp signal before moving off; as it always had done in his 24 years of experience at the box. Instead, the local engine moved straight to step 2 of the process outline above and pulled forwards and stopped on the Down Mainline, where a small lineside disc signal – correctly set for the approaching express – told him not to proceed.

The horrified Philps instantly leapt out of his box and waved his red lamp and blew his whistle, but the noise was lost in the gusty January wind and the crew could not see the red lamp they were not expecting to look for. He rushed back into his box and pulled all his signal levers to “Danger”; driver Moffat of the express saw the signal change as he approached it, and applied his brakes, but it was too late. At 436PM his engine smashed into the back of No. 421. The 104 tons of the latter were pushed to one side and thrown 97 yards back where it had come from, but remained largely upright and suffered remarkably little damage. The front end and frames of Dunedin were badly damaged but although the the 119 ton engine was derailed, it remained upright.

The engine of the express train, No. 874, is recovered. Notice the damage to the front end as a result of the collision

The train coupled up behind was less fortunate; 294 tons of carriages instantly came to a stop and ran into each other like a concertina; the first carriage was completely wrecked, folding up like a telescope, the second was badly damaged at each end, and all the following carriages suffered damaged buffers and couplings, broken windows and warped doors. 140 yards of railway were torn up.

Wrecked front carriage of the express. The engine of the local train, No. 421, is in the background.

At 437PM, Philps sent out an “Obstruction Danger” signal and telephoned Central Control in Edinburgh; all traffic on the line came to a stop, preventing further catastrophe. The stunned passengers in the express train found that the warped doors had jammed in their frames; fortunately all expect the rear carriage in the train had electric lighting so the danger of a catastrophic fire from acetylene lighting gas was absent. The many soldiers and sailors on board led the recovery effort; climbing out through smashed windows and breaking open doors to evacuate the wounded. Some of the carriages were so inaccessible as a result of jammed doors that rescuers had to smash through their wooden sides to release those trapped inside. Local nurses and doctors from Ratho and Kirkliston villages rushed to the scene, as did members of the British Red Cross Society and St. Andrew’s Ambulance Association. Colonel J. W. Pringle who led the accident investigation praised them all.

Wrecked front carriage of the express as seen from the other direction. Notice the sheet metal of the tender of the local train has folded up from the force of the impact.

Most of the dead and injured were in the demolished first carriage; only 3 people escaped it without injury. Eleven died in the collision, four were from the same family. One of the injured died in hospital the following day, taking the toll to twelve. Of the 46 injured, 31 were sent to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, including driver Ramsay, fireman Cairns and driver Moffat; the latter being one of the most seriously injured. Most of the dead were from the west and identifying the deceased was delayed on account of relatives needing to come through from Glasgow; one man who made that grim journey to the city mortuary lost his father, mother and two younger sisters. He found his aunt and uncle in the Infirmary. The full list of those who died was:

• Margaret Gibson or Philp (c. 40) of Yoker, Glasgow
• Thomas Gibson, a farmer of Port Bannatyne on Bute
• Hugh Peat (16), a plumber of Bridgeton, Glasgow
• Wilhelm Pentzlin (70) of Glasgow
• Duncan Macfadyen, a carter of Glasgow
• William Heatlie, an engineer of Dalmuir, Clydebank
• Isabella Lyall (50) of Barnhill, Glasgow;
• Robert Lyall (50), a tailor’s machinst, husband of Isabella
• Ina Lyall (7) and Maggine Lyall (5), children of Isabella and Robert
• Grace Wilson of Partick, Glasgow
• Catherine White of St. Boswells, Roxburghshire

It only took until 3 O’Clock in the afternoon of the next day to get the line open again for traffic. Funerals took place on Saturday 6th for the victims. Five of the 12 took place in Edinburgh; those of William Heatlie Hugh Peat, Duncan Macfadyen and, William Pentzlin took place in Newington Cemetery and that of Margaret Gibson or Philp in The Grange. A large cortège awaited the return of those returned to Glasgow for Burial.

The subsequent enquiry found that both signalman Philp at South Queensferry Junction and driver Ramsay of the local train shared responsibility for the accident. Philp assumed, as a result of his extensive experience at the junction, that Ramsay would await further instruction from him before moving forward onto the mainline. He assumed that Ramsay would know it has intention to hold him here until the express passed. Ramsay, who was only on his 3rd day on the line, assumed that when Philp showed him the white light and hand signal to move forward into the loop that this meant he was safe to complete the entire run-around procedure without awaiting further instruction. He assumed that Philp would never have accepted an express train onto this section of mainline while he was performing his manoeuvre.

The enquiry was not just critical of these two men, however. It was critical of the general layout of the junction and of the company and its practices. These were criticised for the fact that the line was run by long-standing convention and ambiguous hand signals rather than clearly written and understood instructions. It was critical of the admission that the local signalmen were aware the run-around process was not as it should be done “by the book” but had never raised it with their superiors. And of their superiors, it criticised the company’s practice of using district inspectors drawn from local boxes; who were overly familiar with local practices and would not have necessarily have thought of them as being out of the ordinary.

Criticisms of the North British Railway in the report of the 1917 crash

Lastly, it was critical that on 20th December 1911, an almost identical accident had occurred when the 820PM Glasgow to Edinburgh express had run into a light engine from the Ratho Low train performing the same run-around manoeuvre across the mainline. (On that occasion, fortunately there were only minor injuries)

The final conclusion of the report into the 1911 crash

Although the company had enacted the above recommendations, sadly they were not sufficient to prevent the 1917 tragedy from occurring as a result of simple misunderstanding and mistaken assumptions.

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.
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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.

South Leith station bench

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.

Original source: Kenneth G. Williamson on Flickr

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.

Original source: Kenneth G. Williamson on Flickr.

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.

OS 1849 Town Plan. Tower Street (blue), Constitution Street (yellow) and South Leith Station (orange)

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.)

An animated timeline of railways and railway stations in Leith, from 1830 – 1990. Dock, mineral and private sidings omitted for clarity. © Self

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.

Railway Stations of Leith on the NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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.

Leith Central Station at the bottom. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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 Leith New Lines. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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 Leith Walk. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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

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.

South Leith station bench

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.

Original source: Kenneth G. Williamson on Flickr

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.

Original source: Kenneth G. Williamson on Flickr.

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.

OS 1849 Town Plan. Tower Street (blue), Constitution Street (yellow) and South Leith Station (orange)

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.)

An animated timeline of railways and railway stations in Leith, from 1830 – 1990. Dock, mineral and private sidings omitted for clarity. © Self

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.

Railway Stations of Leith on the NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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.

Leith Central Station at the bottom. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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 Leith New Lines. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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 Leith Walk. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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

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.

South Leith station bench

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.

Original source: Kenneth G. Williamson on Flickr

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.

Original source: Kenneth G. Williamson on Flickr.

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.

OS 1849 Town Plan. Tower Street (blue), Constitution Street (yellow) and South Leith Station (orange)

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.)

An animated timeline of railways and railway stations in Leith, from 1830 – 1990. Dock, mineral and private sidings omitted for clarity. © Self

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.

Railway Stations of Leith on the NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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.

Leith Central Station at the bottom. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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 Leith New Lines. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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 Leith Walk. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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

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.

South Leith station bench

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.

Original source: Kenneth G. Williamson on Flickr

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.

Original source: Kenneth G. Williamson on Flickr.

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.

OS 1849 Town Plan. Tower Street (blue), Constitution Street (yellow) and South Leith Station (orange)

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.)

An animated timeline of railways and railway stations in Leith, from 1830 – 1990. Dock, mineral and private sidings omitted for clarity. © Self

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.

Railway Stations of Leith on the NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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.

Leith Central Station at the bottom. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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 Leith New Lines. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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 Leith Walk. NBR (olive) and CR (blue) railways, later the LNER and LMS © Self

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!

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The Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric War: the thread about the fight to build an improbable and impossible railway

An initial version of this thread was written in December 2020.

In 1844, Britain was in the grip of a stock market bubble called the “railway mania”. Rival companies vied to build lines here, there and everywhere, and attracted ever increasing financial speculation. In Edinburgh, three principal schemes were converging at a central locus that would later become known as Waverley Station; the Edinburgh & Glasgow – running between those two cities – the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton – running north to a ferry terminal at Granton through the Scotland Street tunnel, with a branch to Leith – and the North British Railway – entering the city from the east and Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Railway mania reaches Edinburgh; the E&G in green, the EL&G in Yellow and the NBR in brown. Overlaid on an OS 6-inch map of the period.

These railways favoured orthodox steam locomotives to provide their motive power, with occasional assistance by rope haulage for steep gradients,e.g. the Scotland Street Tunnel. However there was an exciting new technology which promised cleaner, faster and more economical railways that would be cheaper to build; the “Atmospheric Railway”.

This name does not come from them having a particularly romantic ambience, it is because they are propelled – in theory – by atmospheric pressure. In principal the scheme was simple; a slotted tube was laid between the railway tracks and every few miles there was a pumping house which exhausted the air from the pipe, creating a vacuum. A piston in the pipe was pushed along by the atmospheric pressure behind it; if you attached a train to that then you could propel it too. The trick to get it working was how to connect the train and the piston without breaking the vacuum. This required a longitudinal valve (in practice, long leather flaps) to seal the tube; a trick that nobody ever managed to pull off reliably.

The atmospheric railway system was patented in 1839 by Samuel Clegg and the Samuda brothers. They set up a demonstration of the system at Wormwood Scrubs in West London. This impressed the directors of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway in Ireland who felt it would be suitable for an extension of their line from Kingstown to Dalkey. This was a 1 3/4 mile branch and began operation on 19th August 1843. It persisted for a full 9 years until a small locomotive was brought in to do the same work. The Dalkey scheme attracted the attention of the London & Croydon Railway, who in 1844 built a short 1 1/4 mile atmospheric expansion of their mainline from London Bridge station to Bricklayers Arms. This was to try and reduce congestion on a steep section of the line with a number of stops and starts. The whole thing though was a “sad fiasco” which consumed a huge amount of capital and was terminated in 1847.

Contemporary illustration of the Saint-Germain atmospheric railway in France. Note the vacuum tube between the rails and the slot in its top, sealed (in theory) by the leather flap valves“Croydon Atmospheric Road”, from the Illustrated London News, October 11th 1845

These were small schemes and most sensible railway engineers steered well clear of the obvious complexities of the system for larger scale application, but the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel was an exception. He was captivated by the promise of this modern and unconventional technology and proposed it for the 51 mile South Devon Railway, to help overcome the steep curves and gradients. The father of modern British railways, George Stephenson, denounced the idea as “a great humbug” before it even got going. Brunel’s own locomotive engineer, the eminently sensible Daniel Gooch, said he “could not understand how Mr. Brunel could be so misled. He had so much faith in his being able to improve it that he shut his eyes to the consequences of failure.” Brunel however remained convinced and the force of his reputation carried the scheme through; the South Devon opened its first atmospheric section in September 1847, at least a year later than planned. By September 1848 it was abandoned, having “rapidly disintegrated throughout its entire length“.

A surviving section of track and 15 inch vacuum tube of the South Devon atmospheric railway. CC-BY-SA 2.5 Chowells

Despite these hiccups, for a brief period from 1845-1846, the “railway mania” investment bubble was briefly joined by “atmospheric fever.” And once again, Edinburgh and Leith were in on it, with not just one but two atmospheric schemes were proposed. And not just two schemes; two in direct competition, running from the same start and end points, less than 100m apart, each backed by a considerable array of the councillors, merchants and notable figures of both the City and its port. And so commenced the brief but petulant Edinburgh and Leith Atmospheric Railway War of 1845.

The rival Edinburgh & Leith atmospheric schemes were both formed at some point in June 1845; each claimed to be the original and genuine scheme and that the other was a pretender. In one corner was the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Railway (which we shall call the Atmospheric Route) and in the other was the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Direct Railway (which we shall call the Direct Route.) The engineer to the former was John Miller, who designed the Almond Valley Viaduct for the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway and also Granton Harbour. The latter had George Gunn, also a railway engineer, but one who had hitherto acted in support of another, including Miller himself.

The Atmospheric Route proposed to run a railway from a terminus in the Low Calton – with a connection to the “Waverley” stations – through the Greenside Valley, under London Road and then through the market gardens parallel to Leith Walk. It then continued around the west of Leith Links to a principal terminus near the Assembly Rooms at Constitution Street. From here, branches ran to the docks, with one possibly a small passenger terminus for the Forth ferries and the other going over (or under) the river to the wet docks. A service every ten minutes was promised.

The Direct Route originated at a station near West Register Street, with an onward connection to one or more of the “Waverley” stations. It ran underground down Leith Street, possibly with an intermediate station in the vicinity of York Place, and continued underground in a “cut and cover” tunnel a few feet below the surface to Elm Row. Here it re-surfaced to run in a semi-recessed trench down the entirety of Leith Walk, the proposal being to provide regular bridges across this road.

A drawing in the “Lighthouse” Stevenson collection showing the “Direct route” at Union Place. CC-BY NLSA drawing in the “Lighthouse” Stevenson collection showing the “Direct route” at Antigua Place. The tunnel roof was to be just 2.5 feet below the surface. CC-BY NLS

While this proposal might seem absurd today – Leith Walk is almost end-to-end 4 storey tenements and is Scotland’s most densely populated neighbourhood by quite some margin – bear in mind that the street is all “made up ground”; it’s a former defensive feature, so easy to dig out, and that in the 1850s it was nothing like as built up as it is today. It was very lightly developed with few large or important buildings, and almost pastoral in character. It was intended to use an “inclined plane” (i.e. gravity) to provide downhill locomotion to Leith and the atmospheric principle to get back up the hill to Edinburgh. There would be two tracks but only the uphill would be powered, this would cut costs but greatly reduce operational flexibility; they did however hedge their bets and publicly did not preclude themselves from using normal steam locomotives “should they prove expedient.”

What the Leith Walk atmospheric railway of the “Direct route” might have looked like. London Illustrated News illustration of the Dalkey atmospheric railway in January 1844

There two atmospheric schemes not only had each other to contend with, additional pressure placed on both by the conventional railway of the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton, – already building a line from Scotland Street to North Leith via Bonnington (yellow line on the route map below) – but were now also lodging a bill with Parliament to build an extension from Bonnington across the Water of Leith to South Leith (the pale yellow line). In November the North British Railway joined in and announced their intention to tunnel through the eastern end of the Calton Hill to get from their existing mainline at Croft-an-Righ to the top of Easter Road, down which they would run a horse-drawn tramway to a terminus in the vicinity of Queen Street (pale brown line).

Atmospheric Fever in Edinburgh; the “Atmospheric Route” in red and the “Direct Route” in cyan. The pale lines are the proposals to reach Leith by the EL&G and the NBR. Note the darker blue line of the Edinburgh & Dalkeith railway approaching Leith via Niddrie from the east. Overlaid on an OS 6-inch map of the period.

The Atmospheric route got their preliminary announcement published first on October 7th 1845, a day before the Direct route. They were seeking a capitalisation of £100,000. The following day the Direct route announced they were seeking £200,000 and accused the Atmospheric route of financial impropriety by issuing considerably more shares to the public than they were actually available. The Direct route stated that they were proposing their scheme lest “the independence, usefulness and commerce of [Edinburgh & Leith] are gone forever”.

Initial invitations to purchase shares were made by both schemes in the Caledonian Mercury and Evening Courant in June 1845, but there was almost instantly a problem arose. One of the merchants listed as backing the Atmospheric Route denied any connection with it and that his name had been put against it without his knowledge. As did the stock exchange said to be dealing in the sale. As was the stock broker claimed to be acting for the railway! All three immediately took out their own personal adverts in the next days Scotsman to this effect. This pattern of disinformation and using the columns of the newspapers to fight a proxy war was one that was to continue.

Scotsman, 18th June 1845

By October, both schemes were ready to issue their shares. Adverts to this effect were placed in the Edinburgh papers and also in Glasgow too (each city having its own stock exchange at this time). The Direct route was careful to point out in their advert that all other railway schemes proposed to Leith were “inutile and insufficient“. Despite the improbability of two such rival schemes, with the railway investment boom being what it was the shares of both concerns were oversubscribed. Adverts were placed in newspapers seeking to buy and surplus share and each company seemed to spread gossip that their opponent had not allocated their shares in an equitable manner. As a result, the companies had to place further adverts in the newspapers to reassure investors of the fair nature of their allocation.

A blank share certificate of the Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Direct Railway

And then the “phoney war”, hitherto conducted through the newspaper columns alone, suddenly got a lot more real. In the early hours of October 19th 1845, Sunday, a representative of the Atmospheric route pinned copies of its parliamentary notices in public on the church doors of Edinburgh & Leith (this was actually a legal requirement as a way to circulate official notices around the public – it was not until the 20th century that churches would have dedicated public notice boards for this purpose). However, when the faithful came to worship on the Sabbath later that morning, it was found that the Direct route had also been out and had replaced all the notices with their own.

Martin Luther also fixed his controversial notice to a church door

The Atmospheric route was outraged, offering a reward of £50 if the perpetrator could be apprehended. The Direct route denied all complicity and reiterated that they were the original scheme and the opposition were “plagiarists”, out to serve not the public but only their own interests.

Reward notice offered by the Atmospheric route

The next task for both schemes was to collect the deposit money for their shares, complete their surveys, plans and engineering proposals and prepare their bills to go before parliament for approval. While this took place, after the outrage on the Sabbath, the skirmishing returned to tit-for-tat adverts placed in the newspapers by the solicitors of each scheme. The details of this are tiresome and childish, each consistently blamed the other for forcing its hand and making it respond. On October 29th, both companies took out extensive, self-important adverts in the Scotsman in side-by-side columns in which they each reiterated the authenticity of their own schemes and attacked that of their opponent. Both besmirched each other as not acting in the interests of the travelling public and merely being moneymaking schemes for their backers. Each also claimed to be the original railway proposal and that the other was a mere copycat.

The Direct route consistently positioned itself as the “bona fide” and original scheme, thereby having the right of putting forward their bill to Parliament. It said that its rival “thereby created in the public mind a just and general dissatisfaction” and that that the criticism of their scheme had been “inveterate and persevering“. However, they were repeatedly vague about the specific details of their proposed route – beyond it just being more “direct” than the competition. The reality differed; their route was less than 50m to the west and the distance saving marginal. By choosing the route down the middle of Leith Walk – rather than the sensible parallel one of its rival through undeveloped ground – they gave themselves a far more expensive and complex construction proposition.

Neither company was prepared to back down, and both published notices proclaiming their intent to lodge a bill with Parliament. When the notices of intent were made to Parliament, the Treasurer’s Committee of the Edinburgh Town Council made it known that they would act in dissent, “inasmuch as it was proposed by these companies to take possession of the whole of the public markets beneath the North Bridge.” On November 20th, the Direct route “[had] the pleasure to inform the Shareholders” that their engineer had assured them their plans and surveys were nearing completion in order that they could be lodged with Parliament.

The sparring continued over the festive season as both companies tried to get the other to withdraw their bills. And then on January 29th 1846, in a surprise notice in the Caledonian Mercury, the Direct route threw in the towel and indicated that they agreed to give the Atmospheric route their “cordial cooperation and support”. After seven months, the war was over. Two days later it was announced that the Atmospheric route had lodged their bill with Parliament.

The surrender notice, in the Caledonian Mercury

But when the bill came to be read, the railway took the unusual action of immediately asking for more time. This was reluctantly given despite their opponents trying to use this as an excuse to have it thrown out; the Trustees of Heriot Hospital, who owned much of the land over which the railway was to run, and the competing Edinburgh, Leith & Granton having objected. The road ahead for the Atmospheric route was now clear, and with their focus back on the project and not fighting the competition, they evidently finessed their route, as the plans prepared for the bill are different from those described initially. A station has been inserted at Blenheim Place and at Duke Street, and the terminus is now at the harbour. The freight branches to the wet docks were still there, with an awkward approach over (or under) the lower drawbridge

The final route of the Edinburgh & leith Atmospheric, from Scotland’s Railway Atlas by David Spaven, from a map in the collection of the NLS.

The company pressed on, but despite its triumph in the “Atmospheric war”, all was not well. Over Christmas, the Bank of England had increased interest rates. It was becoming obvious to many that the railway bubble was exeactly that, and that the investments might not be a sure fire winner, and began to get cold feet. Indeed this may have been what caused the Direct route to withdraw; was it a strategic withdrawal rather than a tactical surrender? The Atmospheric route‘s investors were evidently getting unsettled, and on April 6th, at a Meeting in the Waterloo Hotel in Edinburgh, a general meeting was called at the demand of key backers.

An 1845 newspaper cartoon warning over the dangers of “Railway Mania” financial speculation

Asked to account for its progress, the committee stated that they had spent £670 in Edinburgh and £2,000 in Leith on ground for the termini, and a further £250 towards the Town Council for rights to run through the ground in their ownership. Construction costs were estimated at £160,000 and £1,000 had been set aside to cover the costs to date of the Direct route in a conciliatory gesture for their co-operation. It was noted that a deputation from the committee had been on a fact-finding visit to the Croydon Railway’s atmospheric operation and found its principal to be “most admirably adapted for the projected line.” This is interesting considering the persistent difficulties of that undertaking. The committee estimated that running costs would be 4d per mile, which was challenged by a key shareholder who countered that in Parliament the respected railway engineer Joseph Locke had stated that ordinary locomotives were costing 10d per mile and that the Croydon atmospheric was running up the incredible amount of 2/10d per mile.

The shareholders went on the record to say they were unhappy that the recent changes in the financial markets had made the scheme far less attractive and that huge additional costs (these were not specified, but one assumes they were for engineering) had made themselves known. The complainants made a motion to circulate the full details of the undertaking’s most recent reports amongst the shareholders and return at a further General Meeting on April 16th once there had been a chance to read these. The shareholders were clearly having second thoughts, time was pressing as they were due in Parliament to have their bill read as soon as May 4th, and one wonders if they were just looking for an excuse to call the whole thing off.

The General Meeting meeting was duly held, with the engineer Mr Miller and the patentee of the atmospheric principal, Mr Samuda, in attendance. on the 16th. By a majority of 462 votes to 309, it was decided to proceed with the bill – but to have one more vote to confirm this before going in front of Parliament. The naysayers, led by a Mr Berry – probably George Berry esq., chairman of the Leith Chamber of Commerce – retired to the Cafe Royal to plot their next move, and took out an advert in the Caledonian Mercury asking their sympathisers to join them. Two days later they published a letter in the Scotsman challenging the vote, on the grounds that shareholders accounting for 2/3 of the stock had not been present at the General Meeting and it was not therefore quorate. The solicitor acting for this group invited those seeking to wind the company up to sign a petition to parliament, copies of which were held in various locations around Edinburgh, Leith and Glasgow. Within 24 hours, the holders of 2,000 shares, or 40% of all the stock, had signed. The race was on to end the Atmospheric route.

A final General Meeting was due for the 18th May, just 2 weeks before they were due in Parliament, for the shareholders to finally decide the fate of the scheme.

By order of the Committee of Management. Edinburgh, April 27, 1846

The meeting would never take place. On Saturday the 16th May, the “Committee of Management regre to announce to the Shareholders that the Select Committee of the House of Commons to whom the Bill for this Company referred, has found the preamble not proven“. Parliament would not read the bill. The Edinburgh & Leith Atmospheric Railway was dead. The shareholders now set about attempting to recover their investments, the management gave them 8 days to lodge their requests and set about winding up the company and liquidating their assets – the land at the Low Calton and behind the Leith Assembly Rooms that had been purchased for stations. The ground purchased for stations was quickly sold by public roup (the Scottish version of an auction).

On September 1st 1846, at a General Meeting held at the Waterloo Hotel, the company formally voted itself out of existence and agreed to return its remaining balances to the shareholders. Of the £20,000 raised by the Atmospheric route, £11,000 had been spent and little had been achieved apart from the acquisition of a few parcels of land and the creation of much bad blood amongst the merchant and political classes of Edinburgh and Leith. The subscribers at least got back 18s in the pound, or 90% of their investment. For all too many in the railway speculation boom, a failed scheme meant financial ruin. The engineer, John Miller, attempted to take legal action against the company in December 1846 for loss of dividends. I am unclear if he succeeded.

Although they promised so much, atmospheric railways were riddled with insurmountable technical and operational challenges. The problems included, but were not limited to:

• The leather flaps that were required to seal the vacuum wore out and froze as hard as wood in the winter
• The vacuum tube was constantly fouled by dirt and water, needing constant cleaning
• The pumping engines frequently failed; they were just not reliable enough to keep up the constant work required to provide the vacuum. If a steam locomotive failed, it could be uncoupled and replaced, if a large pumping engine suffered the same fate, every train on that section of line would fail
• Construction costs were far higher than promised
• Operating costs were far higher than promised, as a result of the fuel consumption of the stationary engines and the constant maintenance and replacement needs of the vacuum tube

Contemporary illustration of the Saint-Germain atmospheric railway. Note the connection to the propulsion piston under the carriage floor

Footnote. Little more was heard of either scheme ever again, although in 1868 when the engineer to the Atmospheric route – John Miller – was standing for parliament, he was charged in a letter to the Edinburgh Evening Courant by one James Aytoun of having acted with impropriety with regards the scheme and fundamentally having lined his own pockets at the expense of the investors. James Aytoun, esq. was an advocate who had at one time been a prominent supporter of the scheme, but who had become a dissenting voice within it and ended up losing money by his account. It was Aytoun who had seconded the formal motion winding up the company in September 1846.

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.

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Victoria Station: the thread abut a forgotten Royal rail halt you’ve probably never heard of

This thread was originally written and published in June 2020.

This is the sort of unexpected riddle that I like. You’re out for a walk and you see an old gateway that is rather too well made for the wall it sits in and doesn’t seem to lead anywhere.

Why is this gate so wide and why does it seem to go nowhere?Why is that gate pier so substantial and so well formed for something that leads nowhere?

Beyond the unimpressive wooden gate itself, there’s just a little wedge of grass and overgrowth beyond it, before it descends straight down towards the East Coast Mainline railway.

Incongruous walls and gates

So why is this old gate here? Well, if you rake around in the books and maps you’ll find out that this isn’t just any old railway access gate, this is an old Royal railway access gate. You see, these gate piers are all that remains of Queen Victoria’s personal, private railway station for when she was visiting Edinburgh and lodging in the Palace of Holyroodhouse. We can just see the station in the below photo taken looking east from “Muschet’s Cairn” in Holyrood Park in the 1880s; to the right of the tenement there is a projection, with a distant chimney above it. This is a covered walkway and an iron archway over the gate.

“Muschat’s Cairn, entrance to Holyrood Park”. Thomas Begbie, 1887,© Edinburgh City Libraries

Through the gateway, it was just a short royal stroll down a flight of steps to a private platform for the royal train. Here it could be met by one’s personal carriage so that one could be whisked the short distance away to the back gate of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, far from the prying eyes of the Edinburgh crowd.

OS 1849 Town plan showing “The Queen’s Station”, the platform and the gates. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

In 1850 The Scotsman reported that the Directors of the North British Railway were “in the course of erection” of a platform at Meadowbank for the Royal Train to stop at following its inaugural run over the Tweed on the Royal Border Bridge.

“The Queen, Prince Albert & the Royal Children departing in their Railway Carriage for Scotland”, 1850. CC-BY-NC National Galleries Scotland.

The newspaper described the new station was” to be tastefully ornamented for the occasion, there is to be a stair leading up to the old public road at Meadowbank, and distant only a few yards from the gate into Holyrood Park. Her Majesty’s private carriage will here be in waiting to receive her; so that, in the course of ten minutes are the arrival of the train, the Queen and the Royal Consort will, in all likelihood, be occupying the apartments that have been fitted up for their reception in Holyrood Palace.“ Fortunately for us, the London Illustrated News sent ahead an artist who was there to capture the scene and gives us the only known image of the station. Notice the crown atop the royal carriage.

London Illustrated News, 6th September 1852

For the Queen’s visit to Edinburgh in September 1852, the Scotsman went so far as to refer to the “Victoria Station at Meadowbank“. Ten horses and two royal private carriages were sent ahead from London to Edinburgh via York, arriving by the afternoon mail train for her Majesty’s personal use in travelling between Meadowbank and Holyrood. When the Queen arrived on September 1st, “The engine was beautifully decorated, having in front the words “God Save the Queen” in large gilt letters.” After the formalities were concluded with the greeting party, the Queen and Prince Albert ascended the stairs from the platform to their waiting carriages, where a guard of honour of the 7th Hussars from Piershill Barracks was waiting, their band striking up God Save the Queen.

The Royal Train behind the engine Albion for the journey to Scotland, 1850. CC-by-SA 4.0 Science Museum Group Collection, © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Once the royal party were officially in residence at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Royal Standard was run up the flagpole and the gunners of Edinburgh castle fired a salute. This was however their second of the day; a signal hoisted earlier in the morning from the Nelson Memorial on the top of Calton Hill to a London steamer approaching Leith had been misinterpreted and an over-enthusiastic garrison had fired the royal salute. This created a minor panic amongst the dignitaries, railway officials and spectators of the city who suddenly feared that the Queen had arrived and nobody was there to greet her. One can only imagine the pandemonium until the railway telegraph office located the royal train outside Dunbar.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are shown onto a Royal carriage by George Hudson, a London Illustrated News image

For the 1860 visit, a description is given of how the station was decorated for such visits. “The stair leading from the platform to the road was covered with an awning of white and pink calico, and the recesses on either side contained a neatly arranged assortment of flowers, evergreens and heather. The stair-case was covered with a merled carpet, with a stripe of Stuart tartan in the centre“.

As far as is known, there was only one occasion when a regular passenger train stopped here; on August 22nd 1872 a London to Edinburgh express was temporarily halted to allow some of Queen Victoria’s children to disembark. The last use of the station was for the Royal visit to Scotland in 1881. Even the Victorians realised stopping trains on the mainline into Edinburgh from London just a mile shy of the final destination for Royal purposes wasn’t the best use of the railway. The practice of also loading wagons onto the back of the royal train carrying state coaches and horses incurred further delays, as these had to be brought down the line from North Bridge Station (what would later become Waverley).

In 1882, an irate letter was written to the green ink page of the Scotsman to complain that the Town Council were now using the platform as a collection point for the “ashes and dirt” of one quarter of the city before its onwards transport by rail for disposal. The station was only “open” for 31 years – and even then it was used only once or twice a year – but those gate piers have survived 141 years longer than that. There’s a planning application out though to build on this gushet*, so catch them while you still can. (* = gushet is a Scots term for a triangular portion of land). The same stretch of wall has another (unresolved) little secret too. The ghost of a small building that I can’t quite unravel. It looks like two wall ends (green) with the back of a fireplace or window (yellow) in between.

What have we here?

If there was something here, it’s missing from the 1817 and 1849 town plans, so either is older than both or came and went in between. The boundary wall pre-dates the railway and this road was widened on a number of occasions starting with the Royal Visit of George IV in 1822. No structure is marked but this could have been a gardener’s bothy removed when the road was widened.

Kirkwood’s 1817 Town plan showing the location where there was at one time a lean-too structure built into the wall. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

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.

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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.

Line of the Pilrig to Seafield section of the Caledonian Railway, traced over a 1971 OS land use survey map on a 6-inch to the mile base map, 1966 survey. CC-by-NC-SA via National Library of Scotland

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.

Ordnance Survey 6-inch scale map of Leith, 1906. The North British Railway is highlighted blue, the Caledonian Railway in red and the Leith New Lines in green. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

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.

Easter Road #NowAndThen image overlay showing the Caledonian Railway bridge in 1974 and the modern Google Streetview background. Original from Edinphoto. This bridge was removed between January and February 1980.

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.

Cover, City of Edinburgh, Leith Local Plan, Draft Final Report, April 1975. Volume Two. Schedules and Appendices.Proposal diagram for the Leith Walk Sawmills and Caley railway yard land off of Pilrig Park.

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.

1929 aerial photo showing the trackbed of the Leith New Lines between Easter Road (bottom right) heading west towards Leith Walk (top left). The large roof to the top right of the photo is Leith Central Station. That building along with the tenements along the line of Manderston and Gordon Streets have since been demolished. The large white roof belongs to the Capitol cinema, until recently a bingo hall. SPW027351 via Britain from Above.

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.

Excerpt from 1980 report.

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.

Looking along the viaduct above Jane Street towards Leith Walk on a very grey day in 2021. Photo © Self

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.

Line of the Coburg Street to Wariston section of the North British Railway, traced over a 1971 OS land use survey map on a 6-inch to the mile base map, 1966 survey. CC-by-NC-SA via National Library of Scotland

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.

Renderings by Biomorphis of their engineered timber and cable bridge structure they proposed over Leith Walk.

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

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.

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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

Destructor! the thread about Powderhall’s railway and how it dealt with the Victorian city’s rubbish

Now here’s a little story, To tell it is a must
About an unsung hero, That moves away your dust

Lonnie Donegan, “My Old Man’s a Dustman”

Powderhall was one of Edinburgh’s lesser known railway stations. It was only open for 21 years, from 1895 until closure in 1916 as a wartime economy measure (to free up manpower for military recruitment). It was one of a number of less well patronised stations in the city that were closed; some would later reopen after the war, but Powderhall never did.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/40846647883

The bearded stationmaster standing on the platform above may well be the same man sitting on the bench below.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/46706543154

The station opened was opened by the North British Railway on April 22nd 1895 on its existing line from Abbeyhill Junction to Granton and North Leith.

Railway Clearing House diagram map of the Edinburgh district, Powderhall is centred and highlighted.

Coming from the direction of Edinburgh, it was immediately preceded by Leith Walk Station and followed by Trinity (on the Granton line) and Bonnington (on the North Leith line). The Evening News described it as the “best that the Company have erected” in the district, with excellently appointed waiting rooms, mirrors and lighting throughout. There were two waiting rooms and waiting would be required as there was only one train per hour, and these only served the Granton line as it was felt Leith Walk and Bonnington were too close to make stopping the trains to Leith there worthwhile. The station master was Mr Bowerbank, “for 19 years inspector at Waverley Station“. The station was accessed from a booking hall that was at the level of Broughton Road, extended out from the bridge that took the carriageway across the tracks.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/34004075508

The animated transition below shows the above image overlaid on a modern streetscape.

Now-And-Then at Powderhall station.

The photo of the station booking office was probably taken not that long after closure, judging by some of the detail we can see. The place looks a bit abandoned, with a light over the doorway removed or broken? Posters in windows may indicate its closure and the station pinboard appears to be obscured by large posters on which is legible “The Sale of …”.

Powderhall Station booking office and entrance building

A fire here in July 1925 destroyed the roof and interior and it was demolished not long thereafter. The façade was reduced in height at this time to continue to serve as the bridge parapet, so when you pass it you can be forgiven for thinking it was always meant to look that way. Instead, the three central recesses are the former window bays and the lower section on either side the doorways, rebuilt to serve as gateways to the station steps which continue to provide access to the platforms long after closure.

Powderhall Station remains. © Self

In 1930, then owners the London & North Eastern Railway applied for permission to convert the two waiting rooms into domestic houses, which was approved. Each house got a section of garden and had fenced-off access down the former platform via the station steps from Broughton Road. The below photo, which could be any time in the 1950s through to 1950s, shows smoke coming from one of the chimneys, a sure sign of life within.

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The area name Powderhall comes from a house of that name the Powder Hall, a house and (gun)powder mill set up in the locality around 1695 by the local landowners the Balfours of Pilrig. From the picture below with its wonky window placements and awkward proportions, one gets the idea that it was an older 17th century house that had been progressively altered to try and fit the ideal of a Georgian villa, with mixed success. The house passed later into the Mylne family, the Setons and then Sir John Hunter Blair, grandson of Sir James Hunter Blair.

Powder Hall, from Old & New Edinburgh by James Grant, vol. 3

In the map below, the site of the Railway Station is in Mr. Milne’s ground, just to the left of the house of Rose Bank.

Ainslie’s Town Plan of Edinburgh, 1804. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

In the back of quite a number of the above pictures we can see parts of a Scottish Baronial-style building. This was the ominously named Corporation Destructor! In a time when nearly all household waste was combustible it was mostly burned in the home fireplace; glass and ceramic jars and bottles were returned and reused, and metal cans had recycling value too. Larger or non-combustible items and what to do with partially combusted ash, rotten food and the thousands of tons of horse manure posed a growing problem however. In 1891 the city estimated it had an annual collection of 110,000 tons of refuse. 20,000 tons were classed as “mud or sludge” and were easily disposed of. 61,000 tons were being sent by rail or canal to farms. 7,000 tons were going to parks and gardens in the city and the balance of 22,000 tons was being dumped as landfill in old quarries and ravines. There was an additional problem that the “quality” of the waste was decreasing, household waste was increasingly tarnished with undesirable components and thanks to improved domestic sanitation had far less in the way of “night soil” in it and therefore its market value had collapsed. The city’s receipts for selling its waste in the the decade 1881-90 had decreased by over half from 1871-80. The solution was the destructor, a high-temperature incinerator to treat the waste by combustion.

Illustration of the destructor from the Broughton Road side. From “Refuse destructors : with results up to present time” by T. Tomlinson, 1894

This scheme was highly controversial before it was even built. One local proprietor, writing to the Scotsman labelled it the “Gehenna of Edinburgh” (a valley in the Holy Land where the kings of Juda sacrificed their children in a fire; a destination of the wicked where they atoned for their sins.) The Dean of Guilt Court approved its construction on March 30th 1892 and it was estimated it would cost £16,000.

Illustration of the destructor from Powderhall Grounds to its rear. From “Refuse destructors : with results up to present time” by T. Tomlinson, 1894

The Destructor system was designed by the City Engineer, John Aitken Cooper in consultation with Glasgwegian marine engineer James Howden. In 1882 Howden had patented a forced-draught system for boilers which blew air pre-heated by the boiler’s own hot exhaust gases into the furnace, increasing the rate and consistency of combustion. This was perfect for ensuring thorough “treatment” of the waste being consumed in the furnaces and the higher temperatures resulted in a reduction in empyreumatic gases; the products of imperfect combustion, which resulted in smells, smoke and pollution. There were ten combustion “cells“, each of which had a Horsfall-type furnace and could consume 10 tons of refuse a day, which was fed in through the top from a loading platform (“M. Charging doors in the diagram below). Pollution was further reduced by four “fume cremators”, coke-fired furnaces where a temperature of 800-1000°C was maintained to literally burn the smoke and destroy its empyreumatic components. At the base of the 185ft tall chimney was a cyclone-type dust-catching system.

Plans of the Destructor and Fume Creators employed at Powderhall. From “Refuse destructors : with results up to present time” by T. Tomlinson, 1894

There was space for a 150 ton stockpile on the site. Heat from the processes was used to generate steam, which drove a mill during the day to crush the furnace clinker into a commercially attractive size. At night it provided electric light to allow the work of destruction to carry on 24 hours a day. The baronial-style red sandstone building on Broughton Road was the stables for the twenty resident horses that pulled the city’s scaffie carts, scaffie being the Scots word for a scavenger or street cleaner. It was also designed to screen the offending Destructor plant behind it from the public’s view.

Architect’s elevation of the Destructor’s stable block from 1893.

The Destructor was completed and ready for action up on the 14th August 1893, with Councillor Sloan of the Town Council, who had been instrumental in driving the plans through, having the honour of striking a ceremonial match to light the first furnace. It was estimated it would take the combustion cells an entire month to reach their peak operating rhythm. In practice it was not quite as perfect as it should have been on paper; the 80-100 tons a day promised were in practice more like 50-60 tons and the operating costs were not the promised 10d per ton, but 2/ 8¼d; over three times higher. In 1898 the city was producing 400 tons of refuse per day, so still ended up sending over three quarters of it to landfill in the shale mines of West Lothian around Pumpherston. This latter deficiency was not a failing of the Destructor though, the City Engineer had planned that it would be the first of four for the city, but the others were never provided.

Layout plans of the Powderhall destructor. From “Refuse destructors : with results up to present time” by T. Tomlinson, 1894

The Destructor was closed in 1919 as the plant was life-expired and beyond economical repair, by which time it could only cope with 17% of the city’s refuse output. A new facility was commissioned on the site ten years later in 1929, where waste was first sorted to salvage textiles, paper, glass and metal and the remainder pulverised and compacted for landfill. Incineration was kept to a minimum on site. Ten years later, two similar facilities were provided at Russell Road in Roseburn and at Seafield. All three of these were closed in 1969 as being out of date and too expensive to operate, but particularly because they could not cope with the changes in what society was throwing away. Household fires were less common and therefore so was burning your own rubbish. In addition to this, “disposable” packagings, particularly plastic, were on the increase, as was a boom in consumer goods and a waning of the old fashioned reluctance to throw things away. An entirely new, high-tech and highly automated refuse disposal works was opened in 1971 on the Powderhall Destructor site.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/51676190461

Here, the Corporation’s scaffie carts brought 600 tons a day of the what the city threw away to be to be sorted and incinerated. In 1980 the facility had to be upgraded to cope with 800 tons per day, with a shredding and baling plant installed to process waste for landfill.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/13460108@N06/16647924016

Here’s a striking aerial photo of the Powderhall incinerator at work, just look at that haze it’s casting over the city (bear in mind there is a primary school and nursery directly over Broughton Road from the plant). And this was the problem.

Aerial photo of the Powderhall Incinerator, early 1980s. NCAP.

By 1986 the incinerator had been shut down due to a public campaign against it and changes in environmental legislation. Burning all kinds of waste in an urban environment came to be seen for what it was – an enormous public health and environmental risk. The chimney and plant were demolished but the rest of the facility remained in operation to process waste for landfill. As 100% of its output was now for landfill, the footprint of the incinerator and the site of the long closed Powderhall Station were turned into a transfer station to load the compacted waste onto railway containers for transport to landfill sites. These trains were known as Binliners and were in operation until 2016 when the Powderhall site closed for the final time and the city’s refuse moved to new recycling, sorting and, in a backward step, incineration facilities at Millerhill.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/15916430602

The 1971 waste transfer station was demolished, but the stable block of the original destructor remains and is to be converted into workshops and artists studios. The rest of the site has been given over to a housing development, progress on which appears (as of 2024) to have stalled.

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.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret