The Edinburgh, Leith and Newhaven Railway was a railway company formed in 1836 to connect the city of Edinburgh with the harbours on the Firth of Forth. When the line connected to Granton, the company name was changed to the Edinburgh, Leith and Granton Railway. It opened part of its route in 1846, but reaching the centre of Edinburgh involved the difficult construction of a long tunnel; this was opened in 1847. It was on a steep incline and was worked by rope haulage.
The rope-worked tunnel proved a major handicap, and after the company had been taken over by the North British Railway, a longer but more convenient route was built round the eastern edge of the city at Abbeyhill. It opened in 1868.
By the end of the nineteenth century the Leith station was unsuitable for the developing suburban passenger traffic, and a new branch to Leith Central station was built, opening in 1903.
All of the original route has been dismantled, except part of the line from Piershill to a waste consolidation depot at Powderhall which remained in use until it closed in 2016.
History Before railways The coast of the Firth of Forth runs west to east broadly miles north of the centre of Edinburgh. As the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh was of supreme commercial importance, and the port of Leith became Scotland's principal port. Its first harbour was constructed immediately after 1710. The harbour facilities were much extended between 1800 and 1817.Alexander Campbell, The history of Leith, from the earliest accounts to the present period, William Reid & Son, Leith, 1827 Newhaven, to the west of Leith, also served as a ferry port; its modest harbour facilities were improved after 1792 by the building of a jetty, and in 1825 a basin was formed by the construction of an L-shaped pier.The basin is immediately west of the former Newhaven Heritage Museum.Canmore Website, Edinburgh, Newhaven, Pier Place, Harbour Other small coastal communities on the Forth engaged in fishing and other maritime activities.
Communication with the parts of Scotland further north, and also to the north east coast of England was secured by coastal shipping, and crossings to the southern coast of Fife, easily visible from Leith, were made by large and small boats, connecting with stage coaches.
A railway to the harbours
The sea passage was generally straightforward, although slow and sometimes subject to interruption by bad weather. Getting to the harbour, whether for people or goods, was problematic for such a relatively short distance, and the success of the "coal railways", the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway of 1826 and its successors, caused business interests in Edinburgh to meet in 1835 to consider a railway connection from the city to the Forth. This resulted in a parliamentary bill in the 1836 session, and the Edinburgh, Leith and Newhaven Railway obtained its authorising act of Parliament, the (6 & 7 Will. 4. c. cxxxi), on 13 August 1836.W A C Smith, An Illustrated History of Edinburgh's Railways, Irwell Press, Caernarfon, 1995,
The main line was to run from Princes Street Gardens to Newhaven, with a branch to Leith. Starting the line at Princes Street Gardens required a substantial tunnel on a north–south alignment under the New Town. The construction was to cost £100,000 but handsome dividends of 15% were said to be assured.
As soon as authorisation was obtained, serious doubts were cast on the commercial viability of the scheme, and the landowners under whose property the line would run in tunnel proved troublesome. Serious technical difficulties with the Leith branch were exposed.E F Carter, An Historical Geography of the Railways of the British Isles, Cassell, London, 1959
This caused considerable delay, during which a new harbour was proposed at Trinity, to the west of Newhaven, and the parties interested in that harbour had taken control of the railway company. The location of the proposed northern terminal was changed, to Trinity: a further act of Parliament, the (2 & 3 Vict. c. li) of 1 July 1839 authorised the variation of the route. The southern end, to Canal Street (by Princes Gardens) and the tunnel were unchanged. Trinity Harbour was never built: the northern terminal was set back from the shoreline and at a high level, but was near Trinity Chain Pier. This had been in use as a ferry pier since 1821 and was apparently preferred for the railway passengers, who made their way on foot from the railway station to the ferry.
On 31 August 1842 the line opened from Trinity to Scotland Street, in the Canonmills district some way from the intended Princes Street terminus: the tunnel to Canal Street was not yet complete, and the Leith branch not started. Horse traction was used, and competition from horse omnibuses, which reached more convenient locations in the city, was serious.John Thomas revised J S Paterson, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: Volume 6, Scotland, the Lowlands and the Borders, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1984,
Granton Harbour
The change of mind about the ferry terminal was not the end of the matter. In October 1837 the Duke of Buccleuch started construction work on the Central Pier at Granton, still further west.Smith and Anderson, page 20; the Ports and Harbours of the UK website says 1836.Ports and Harbours of the UK website at
Buccleuch instituted a ferry service from Granton to Burntisland in September 1844, and the success of this route eclipsed the service from Newhaven and Trinity across the Forth. This took away most of the traffic of the Edinburgh, Leith and Newhaven Railway, which did not come close to Granton. Seeing this difficulty approaching, the EL&HR submitted a bill to Parliament for an extension of their line to Granton, and on 19 July 1844 the (7 & 8 Vict. c. lxxxi) received royal assent. The company's name was changed to the Edinburgh, Leith and Granton Railway, and as well as the Granton extension a branch from Warriston to Leith was authorised. The Granton extension was opened on 19 February 1846. A new and attractive station at Trinity was part of the scheme; the line ran west from there, turning north on to the pier at Granton. The line from Warriston to Leith opened on 10 May 1846.
At Granton, the world's first train ferry took goods wagons by boat to Burntisland in Fife. The service commenced on 3 February 1850. Thomas Bouch designed the ferry slip. The ferry was the Leviathan, and was designed by Thomas Grainger. The through train ferry service was withdrawn in 1876, but a passenger ferry continued for many years.Shipway, J.S. (2004). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.
Canal Street
The southward completion as far as the Princes Street terminal took place on 17 May 1847. It was named Canal Street station from the nearby street which took its name from an ornamental canal that was proposed to be formed from the Nor Loch, but never built.Stuart Harris, The Place Names of Edinburgh, Steve Savage Publishers Ltd, London, 2002, The tunnel from Scotland Street was in length, descending at 1 in 27; it was gas lit throughout, and operated by a stationary steam engine and endless cable. It was also designed by Grainger, and its construction was supervised by George Buchanan. The work was difficult due to shifting sand under the New Town, and the demands of property owners who were concerned for the stability of their buildings. The tunnel is just below street level at Scotland Street, but is below St Andrew Street and below Princes Street. Locomotive haulage had replaced the horses on the open air sections of the railway, but were retained for shunting at Princes Street. The station there was very cramped, with two impossibly short platforms. The station was aligned north to south, and by now the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway had extended to North Bridge station, later Waverley,Ross says that the North British Railway referred to the station as North Bridge at this time. That station was joint from this date with the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway. which was adjacent but on a west to east alignment. There was a sharply curved west-facing connecting spur between the two lines.David Ross, The North British Railway: A History, Stenlake Publishing Limited, Catrine, 2014,
The train service consisted of 25 trains daily to Granton with through coaches to Leith. Two years later this was modified to give Leith a fifteen-minute interval service, with hourly workings to Granton. Sea bathing was a fashionable pastime and a special bathers' train left at 6:45 am to the shore.
Robert Louis Stevenson, reminiscing about a boyhood visit to Edinburgh, wrote that "The tunnel to the Scotland Street Station, the sight of the two guards upon the brake, the thought of its length and the many ponderous edifices and open thoroughfares above, were certainly things of paramount impressiveness to a young mind."
Canal Street was closed on 22 May 1868 and replaced with the General station at Edinburgh, which later became Edinburgh Waverley.
Absorbed by the Edinburgh and Northern Railway
The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, conscious of its own importance as an inter-city railway, had made approaches to take over the Edinburgh Leith and Granton Railway in 1845, but this had come to nothing. The EL&GR had run out of money during the construction work and needed a wealthy sponsor, so the (10 & 11 Vict. c. ccxxxix) was passed on 22 July 1847, allowing the EL&&GR to be taken over with effect from 7 August 1847 by the Edinburgh and Northern Railway,Ross says that the act authorising the acquisition was dated 27 July 1847, but that it was not permitted to be given effect until the following year when 50% of the E&NR had been subscribed. Carter incorrectly gives the date of the act as 2 July 1847. which was in the process of building its line to Perth and the southern shore of the Firth of Tay. As the E&NR was completing its main lines, it changed its name to the Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway on 1 April 1849. The passenger journey from Edinburgh to Dundee therefore started at what is now Edinburgh Waverley station; coaches were hauled up the steep incline in tunnel to Scotland Street, and then on to Granton by steam engine. At Granton, the passengers changed to a ferry boat which took them to Burntisland, then a terminus. Their train left in an eastward direction and ran across Fife to Ferryport-on-Craig, later renamed Tayport, where they changed to a second ferry boat to cross the Tay. The ferry landed them at Broughty Ferry, where they boarded a final train to convey them into Dundee.
The Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway was itself taken over by the North British Railway on 29 July 1862, becoming part of that company's increasingly dominant system.
A new route to Trinity
The inconvenience of the rope-worked tunnel section from Waverley station to Scotland Street was soon made obsolete by advancing technology. The only connection for the transfer of goods wagons from the developing Scottish railway network was through the very sharply curved spur at Waverley station. In 1850 an improved connection between Canal Street and North Bridge stations was made, Edinburgh City Council objections having been satisfied.