Interesting set of photos and informative comments, thank you. The Central Bar, the old station bar, is a superb relic from the glory days of the old station.
I was born round the corner from it and always wanted to explore it when I was small….I imagined old trains standing at the platform’s….thanks for the video.
Just watched the vid out the old signal boxes and then came on to this. I don't get home much, but when I do I like to walk the former rail line (now cycle path) from Dunfermline to Clackmannan ( they took to bridges down so you can't go from the now-demolished North Station all the way to Alloa). There is an rotting signal box which always made me feel sad. I think how cool it must have been to be able to go from Dunfermline to, say, Glasgow via Stirling, and I'm sure I did this as a kid. Crazy to think that before cars, there were indeed lines covering short distances like Leith To Edinburgh often with several trains a day.
Many thanks for showing that - I have a memory of looking in that derelict station back in the early eighties - but was never quite sure if I had imagined it - really great to see the history - and just as I remember it (so must have been real….)
Omg, saw the first shot of how it looked and was like "wait, that street corner looks familiar..." and then by the end I realised part of the old train office buildings are now my former GP and I lived just down and across the road from the big Tesco. Tbf, I moved to Leith from Canada in 2018 so don't know the full history of the area but slowly finding out more!
Is this not the reason trainspotting was the title of Irvin Welsh’s book? Leith had been left to rot since and the closing of this station was testament to that. Begbie meets his drunken father as a kid in the disused station
I am amazed that I didn't know anything about this station, as I must have passed the site several hundred times when I lived in Edinburgh. It seems difficult to believe these days that it was worth the money and effort building a railway line from Leith Central to Edinburgh Waverley - a distance of about two miles by road although the railway line was slightly longer, as it looped round the eastern side of Easter Road and up to Abbeyhill, where it joined what is now the East Coast Mainline. Outside of the south-east of England, there just hasn't been a culture in the UK to travel such short distances by rail for many decades or maybe even over a century.. Given the number of old, disused railway lines in Edinburgh that have become cycle tracks, I suppose that indicates how many train services there must have been in the city at one time.
there's an abandoned line runs up through the New Town, to the Waverley. You can still see a couple of the old Tunnels, one in the park at the foot of Scotland Street, and the other adjacent to the Tesco at Canonmills. There was a station, of course, at the back of the Caledonian Hotel at the West End, and a big goods yard more or less where the Fountain Park centre is now. Those are just a few examples.
Leith developed as a separate town. Railways went everywhere until the 1960s and when the station was built people didn't have other transport options. Railways were also very important for transporting industrial goods and Leith had more heavy industry than Edinburgh. It was/is also the port for Edinburgh so goods needed to be taken to and from Leith. This is what justified the building of the line into Leith itself.
We used to play inside it around 1980, we got access to the old line from Pitt St then onto the bridge and then into the station, it was great fun riding our bmx's all around it and maybe a chase from the cops 😂
My parents both grew up in Leith and my mother told me there were day out trips for children from this station to the countryside (I suspect they would be to the Gifford or the Roslin lines) organised by the local churches.
Very interesting. Having walked up and down Leith Walk hundreds of times I never realised there was a train station there at one time. Ironic that a few decades later they built a tram rail service for hundreds of millions of pounds that services Leith.
@thalesofmiletus2966. I agree. Perhaps even more ironic is the fact that there also used to be a fully operational tram line. In the surgery at the foot of Leith walk there is a blown up copy of a photograph showing the trams. From the clothes people are wearing and the advertising signs on the trams, I would say its 1910/1920.ish
I was brought up on Easter Road, some pals and I got in for a wander, must have been mid-to-late seventies, before the drugs hit Leith. Not a soul inside, eerie and abandoned. You would have had to be pretty desperate to hang out in there...
I can understand that they abolished some lines where there was duplication to places with few people, but why would they abandon services to somewhere as busy as Leith? It is nice there is a tram service now, but for a long time the area had fewer transport options and I wonder if the line could have been adapted to allow for a tram like service.
I worked in the docks for nineteen years and never knew this existed. Can you tell me where what's left of it is so that I can go there next time I'm in Scotland?
It's now a Tesco but you can still see the front at the corner if Leith Walk and Duke Street and the wall is still there at the side of the Tesco Car Park
7my gran stayed in Duke St her house overlooked the back or maybe it was the side of the station every morning at 7am the hooter would go for start of shift, never gave the place much of a thought it was just a building I was just a bairn right enough
@robertdoyle687 not as such, when it became derelict/abandoned it was a pretty grim place which attracted all form of delinquent types, but mostly drug users. Hence why Begbie is heard to say 'my dad is trainspotting' when he finds out that's where he is and what he's doing.
The YLT (Young Leith Team) was nothing but a territorial bunch of schoolboy thugs who'd go warring against other teams/gangs in Edinburgh with similar cringing titles like The YGT (Young Gorgie Terror). I suspect that many of the YLT are no longer alive after the drugs epidemic that swept across Leith and Edinburgh back in the 1980's.
To be fair, this was an early casualty, as the local trains obviously didn't pay. It's hard to know what the trainshed could have been repurposed for, but at least the terminal building survives, even if it is just a supermarket.
Sadly we don't. There has been calls to reopen some of the lost lines but in most cases they are already built on. The Beeching cuts closed thousands of miles of track all over the UK. They should have kept the routes intact so they could be restored. The old routes do make for interesting walks.
Interesting set of photos and informative comments, thank you. The Central Bar, the old station bar, is a superb relic from the glory days of the old station.
I feel ashamed not to have known this history before. Thanks for enlightening me and putting together such a powerful and informative video 😊
What a stunning place! Never knew of it until now. Many thanks.
Love the geometric shapes used in those huge windows. Nice to see they retained the station frontage.
I was born round the corner from it and always wanted to explore it when I was small….I imagined old trains standing at the platform’s….thanks for the video.
Just watched the vid out the old signal boxes and then came on to this. I don't get home much, but when I do I like to walk the former rail line (now cycle path) from Dunfermline to Clackmannan ( they took to bridges down so you can't go from the now-demolished North Station all the way to Alloa). There is an rotting signal box which always made me feel sad. I think how cool it must have been to be able to go from Dunfermline to, say, Glasgow via Stirling, and I'm sure I did this as a kid. Crazy to think that before cars, there were indeed lines covering short distances like Leith To Edinburgh often with several trains a day.
Very nice video ,greetings from Asturias
Great video, thank you.
I grew up on Easter Road and used to play in there as a kid back in the 70s
Many thanks for showing that - I have a memory of looking in that derelict station back in the early eighties - but was never quite sure if I had imagined it - really great to see the history - and just as I remember it (so must have been real….)
Omg, saw the first shot of how it looked and was like "wait, that street corner looks familiar..." and then by the end I realised part of the old train office buildings are now my former GP and I lived just down and across the road from the big Tesco.
Tbf, I moved to Leith from Canada in 2018 so don't know the full history of the area but slowly finding out more!
There is a great website called Threadinburgh that has loads of interesting information about Edinburgh and Leith.
Never knew about this. Thanks.
fascinating - many thanks!
Is this not the reason trainspotting was the title of Irvin Welsh’s book? Leith had been left to rot since and the closing of this station was testament to that. Begbie meets his drunken father as a kid in the disused station
Lived in Edinburgh for ten years. First I've heard of Leith station
I am amazed that I didn't know anything about this station, as I must have passed the site several hundred times when I lived in Edinburgh. It seems difficult to believe these days that it was worth the money and effort building a railway line from Leith Central to Edinburgh Waverley - a distance of about two miles by road although the railway line was slightly longer, as it looped round the eastern side of Easter Road and up to Abbeyhill, where it joined what is now the East Coast Mainline. Outside of the south-east of England, there just hasn't been a culture in the UK to travel such short distances by rail for many decades or maybe even over a century..
Given the number of old, disused railway lines in Edinburgh that have become cycle tracks, I suppose that indicates how many train services there must have been in the city at one time.
there's an abandoned line runs up through the New Town, to the Waverley. You can still see a couple of the old Tunnels, one in the park at the foot of Scotland Street, and the other adjacent to the Tesco at Canonmills. There was a station, of course, at the back of the Caledonian Hotel at the West End, and a big goods yard more or less where the Fountain Park centre is now. Those are just a few examples.
Look at Glasgow, train stop pretty much every area.
Leith developed as a separate town. Railways went everywhere until the 1960s and when the station was built people didn't have other transport options. Railways were also very important for transporting industrial goods and Leith had more heavy industry than Edinburgh. It was/is also the port for Edinburgh so goods needed to be taken to and from Leith. This is what justified the building of the line into Leith itself.
I remember as a kid playing in the station . It used to have flats in it near the clock tower, one had a huge grand piano in it 😊
The station in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting where Begbie sees and recognises his Jaikey Dad and where he will probably end up.
We used to play inside it around 1980, we got access to the old line from Pitt St then onto the bridge and then into the station, it was great fun riding our bmx's all around it and maybe a chase from the cops 😂
The Central bar was part of the station, the waiting room or ticket office.
I remember there was also a freight yard and sheds down Leith Walk, don't remember exactly where but on the right going down.
Very interesting 🤔
My parents both grew up in Leith and my mother told me there were day out trips for children from this station to the countryside (I suspect they would be to the Gifford or the Roslin lines) organised by the local churches.
Very interesting. Having walked up and down Leith Walk hundreds of times I never realised there was a train station there at one time. Ironic that a few decades later they built a tram rail service for hundreds of millions of pounds that services Leith.
@thalesofmiletus2966. I agree. Perhaps even more ironic is the fact that there also used to be a fully operational tram line. In the surgery at the foot of Leith walk there is a blown up copy of a photograph showing the trams. From the clothes people are wearing and the advertising signs on the trams, I would say its 1910/1920.ish
I was brought up on Easter Road, some pals and I got in for a wander, must have been mid-to-late seventies, before the drugs hit Leith. Not a soul inside, eerie and abandoned.
You would have had to be pretty desperate to hang out in there...
I can understand that they abolished some lines where there was duplication to places with few people, but why would they abandon services to somewhere as busy as Leith? It is nice there is a tram service now, but for a long time the area had fewer transport options and I wonder if the line could have been adapted to allow for a tram like service.
My dad worked there till it closed as an electrician
Mine too, as a Fitter, my training instructor at Henry Robb's also worked there
@derekweir7692 my dad's name is Malcolm Stocks
I worked in the docks for nineteen years and never knew this existed. Can you tell me where what's left of it is so that I can go there next time I'm in Scotland?
It's now a Tesco but you can still see the front at the corner if Leith Walk and Duke Street and the wall is still there at the side of the Tesco Car Park
Thanks for that ...
@@NathanielGarro-ru7du The Tesco site is up for sale and will likely be developed for housing.
7my gran stayed in Duke St her house overlooked the back or maybe it was the side of the station every morning at 7am the hooter would go for start of shift, never gave the place much of a thought it was just a building I was just a bairn right enough
The inspiration for the name of the book 'Trainspotting' on which the film was based.
I read that it was used as a meeting place for gangs in the area.
@robertdoyle687 not as such, when it became derelict/abandoned it was a pretty grim place which attracted all form of delinquent types, but mostly drug users. Hence why Begbie is heard to say 'my dad is trainspotting' when he finds out that's where he is and what he's doing.
I always thought the name was due to Renton's bedroom wallpaper. Until now.
What a pity - another building that would have made a great space to work with now.
Trainspotting at Leith Central
So sad.... All that work to build it and passengers used it for just under 50 years closed completely in under 70.....
Demolishing the trainshed was vandalism. It should have been listed and preserved.
Presumably built for the dock traffic.
Really sad to watch
Would have been better if the music was The Fakes, Production.
Damn right, class song
Pud says as above
PC agrees
Love it but no. Music is as it should be.
\WE TRYED TO SAVE IT
Could Weep...
That's a huge station. A bit of an overkill, seemingly
YLT
The YLT (Young Leith Team) was nothing but a territorial bunch of schoolboy thugs who'd go warring against other teams/gangs in Edinburgh with similar cringing titles like The YGT (Young Gorgie Terror). I suspect that many of the YLT are no longer alive after the drugs epidemic that swept across Leith and Edinburgh back in the 1980's.
Jeez! Another lost station. Don't you guys save anything?
To be fair, this was an early casualty, as the local trains obviously didn't pay. It's hard to know what the trainshed could have been repurposed for, but at least the terminal building survives, even if it is just a supermarket.
Sadly we don't. There has been calls to reopen some of the lost lines but in most cases they are already built on. The Beeching cuts closed thousands of miles of track all over the UK. They should have kept the routes intact so they could be restored. The old routes do make for interesting walks.
Not in Tory Britain, ££££££££££
No , we are all immigrants now and don't care 👍👍
"Don't you guys save anything?"
Have you not been to Edinburgh? We've saved most of the city's built heritage.
I used to be a patient in the doctors surgery that is now in the building and upstairs they have a big wall with a photo of the place as a station.