A world's first in 1850s Edinburgh.

[@hairypaulmm7wab195]

Thank You for making this video. The old EN&LR route was a very special place for me growing up in Edinburgh. Great to see Scotland Street again, looking much tidier than it was back when I was one of the local nippers. Before the tunnel was fenced off properly many of us would play in the south tunnel when the weather was rough. Was a great place, out of the way where we didn't bother anyone, we built ramps for our bikes, gang huts furnished with chairs and item that had been dumped in the surrounding streets. We also used the tunnel to store firewood collected through the year for bonfire night. Many times groups of us walked the tunnel and peered through the gate at the end into the Waverley watching the people and trains from the corrugated pipe section seen in Your video, there was no door on it back then, only a rusty old cast iron gate. I also spent many happy months around Waverley Station watching the trains and drawing detailed scale plans of the trackwork and station layout to build a model of the station. The model included the entrance to the EN@LR tunnel. The Scotland Street tunnel and Waverley station were only the start of a great interest in railways, Years later I went on to work as S&T engineer (Signalling and Telegraphy) among other jobs on the railways. Seeing Your video brings back so many happy memories. Thank You.

[@FeoragForsyth]

Thanks for your stories - it's great to hear them. I never got in there, though I hold out hope that one year's Doors Open Day will give me a chance.

[@stevenf9298]

Fantastic video, thanks for putting this together, love learning about the history of Edinburgh! 😊

[@stephenfrench1060]

Absolute brilliant vid of Scotland st tunnel I left Edinburgh 40 years ago but was often in that tunnel in the 70s used to go through it to waverly on motorbikes and look through the railings in waverly, think I walked it once, it was erie I know there was a incline but didn't notice it at the time , I was astounded to learn the southern end was blocked with shops I would have thought it could have been a tourist trail of some sort I think it was a air raid shelter and communication center during ww2

[@FeoragForsyth]

Despite the shops, there's still enough room. It would be cool to add it to the cycle network, with a bike park at the station end.

[@ThomasTrue]

Scotland Street Tunnel housed the LNER Scottish Divisional wartime HQ during WWII, although this was only in an emergency, and the LNER had taken over the old NBR HQ on Waterloo Place. It was never an official air raid shelter, but G.F. Fiennes, a clerk in Waverley at the time, relates in his autobiography, "I Tried to Run a Railway", that when air raid sirens went off in Edinburgh one day, women and children being evacuated were quickly herded into Scotland Street Tunnel for safety.

[@northedinburghnightmares7533]

Absolutely brilliant piece of work. Great stuff👍👍👍

[@gavinoliver7655]

I grew up close to Scotland St in the 60s and spent a lot of my childhood playing in that goods yard (IIRC the last train ran in 1964) and also down in the Inverleith/Trinity area. The area where the Gymnasium was built was converted to a football stadium (Google "St Bernards") and the area right beside Tesco was a football stadium too. There's lots of history associated with that part of the city. I enjoyed the video very nuch, lots of memories tied up in that,

[@FeoragForsyth]

Yeah. I grew up a long way from here, but I still find that area fascinating. I am slowly gathering material for a video about the Gymnasium, but it's a long term project - I want to wait until the reports are published on the excavations they did after demolishing the buildings on the west of the site.

[@gavinoliver7655]

Any links to that ? ​@FeoragForsyth

[@FeoragForsyth]

@@gavinoliver7655 It hasn't even appeared as a short summary in Discovery and Excavation in Scotland yet. Hopefully it will be in the new edition, which is imminent.

[@gavinoliver7655]

@@FeoragForsyth thank you.

[@FeoragForsyth]

The new DES arrived, and then I realised the excavation was in last year's! They didn't find much, other than an edge of the big round boat ride. They were hoping for a buried boat at least.

[@paulashe61]

Issues with the Tay bridge. Wonderful understatement

[@drummerboy1390]

I shared a basement flat in Scotland Street with about ten others when I was a student. It was the only way we could afford it. Bodies everywhere. Never heard about the tunnel until years later, but this video has added much more information. Great video and the maps are excellent. Many thanks.

[@kastandlee]

Thank you for sharing this with us!

[@paulashe61]

I remember when the tunnel was open you would walk up to Waverley. But the piles of Waverley market pierced the railway tunnel

[@FeoragForsyth]

The gate was left unlocked a few years back and a couple of friends went in and took lots of photos. Alas, the one with the camera is no longer with us, but I enjoyed his accounts of the adventure. I was out of town at the time, otherwise I'd have been there too.

[@guyroebuck8510]

Very interesting piece. Thanks so much. .

[@07015678]

Great video and very interesting stuff!

[@ronniewilliams9884]

Ive been trying to figure out Canal St station and how it connects into Waverley Station for ages and now youve just shown me the answer..thank you. I saw recently an old painting of the waverly bridge and it has three arches the one nearest to Princes Street seems to suggest the railway under it comes in at an angle. That must of contained the curved track from Canal St station. This third arch is gone now as its buried by Princes Street Gardens

[@StooFras-TheFiresofHell.]

As a Edinburgh postie I used to deliver mail to Scotland street along Royal Crescent,also as we for a time stayed in Cumberland Street when I was young we used to play in the park that was at the foot of Scotland Street,often saw the boarded up tunnel and wondered at the time where it led, found this out in later years. 🤔

[@FeoragForsyth]

Cool. I remember it being easier to get into when I first moved here, but I never got round to it.

[@streetrambler134]

Very interesting, and nice use of the maps.

[@FeoragForsyth]

Street Rambler - thanks. The maps site is an absolute treasure, isn’t it?

[@streetrambler134]

@@FeoragForsyth do you need to ask before using them as would love to use the maps from them more too

[@FeoragForsyth]

Street Rambler - No. There’s a page on the site giving the conditions for using them, which basically boils down to “put this text on your thing”. There are some complications, but not many.

[@streetrambler134]

@@FeoragForsyth Cheers, will check it out later as editing my mural explore of Glastonbury.

[@FeoragForsyth]

Street Rambler - Looking forward to seeing what you do.

[@ianmccluskie8453]

Very informative, well researched and entertaining. Thanks

[@andrewjameson5918]

Love this, another thing I did not know. Look at W&AK Johnston they have a great history in Edinburgh

[@robnewman6101]

Robert Peel (1788-1850) was the Founder of the first new Metropolitan Police Force at Scotland Yard in 1829.

[@markshrimpton3138]

I remember in the 1970s a gang of bank robbers executed their getaway through the tunnel, exiting at Scotland Street, where they had a car ready. This was well before the Princes Mall (Waverley Shopping Centre) existed. On that site was a Victorian fruit and vegetable market and even at the time of the robbery it was possible to go right along the tunnel’s length. During the Second World War the tunnel was earmarked as an air raid shelter, though I don’t know whether it was much used. Later part of it was used as a short-lived mushroom farm. I only know this because I worked at what is now The Balmoral Hotel and there are tunnels from that, or were, going hither and thither. Interesting upload though, thank you.

[@FeoragForsyth]

Cool story. I'm interested to hear more about the hotel tunnels because a late friend mentioned their existence (but also a lift, which couldn't have gone where he claimed unless it was a Great Glass Elevator). He did manage to get into the Scotland Street Tunnel though, and took photos of wartime stuff - not a shelter, but some kind of control centre apparently. Alas, by the time I was working on this video, the brain tumour was busy taking away his memories including his memory of having taken all the photos he'd showed me 😞

[@markshrimpton3138]

@@FeoragForsyth I worked there part time in the late 70s then again in the mid 80s. The hotel extends almost as far below Princes Street as it rises above it. Myriad rooms, corridors, tunnels. It was a rabbit warren. Whether it’s still like that I don’t know. It was built as a railway hotel and was still under BR’s ownership during the times I worked there. Many of the underground rooms I saw were filled with discarded hotel furniture and fixtures. There were two huge whisky blending vats, big boilers that fed steam out into the steam locomotives. Then there were doors that led through into tunnels and supporting arches beyond the hotel boundaries. Heaven knows why. The architect was W. Hamilton Beattie who died before the hotel was completed. He also designed the Royal British Hotel and the Jenners building.

[@markshrimpton3138]

@@FeoragForsyth on reading your reply again and engaging my brain I realise that the lift to which your friend referred was most likely the one in the Waverley station that took train passengers up to the hotel (and vice versa). When you exited the booking hall and turned right there were doors immediately to your right which took you into a small lobby. Inside was a lift which went up just one level. You came out, turned right and trundled over the railway lines, down a series of corridors then took another lift which came up in the hotel foyer. It’s long gone. I suppose not many hotel guests arrive by train and those that do are expected to give themselves a heart attack going up the Waverley steps. Someone told me there’s now an escalator. I don’t live in Edinburgh now, it’s too much of a all year round tourist town, with no real shops.

[@FeoragForsyth]

@@markshrimpton3138 - that'll be the one. There are now escalators, and plenty of lifts, though the escalators have a habit of not working.

[@Crosshatch1212]

@@markshrimpton3138same at royal terrace hotel you cld go from there underground to the old parliament building just up the road as you say there was also bricked up tunnel ways ,

[@douglaskinloch6272]

I only "discovered" this line when I was looking at the NLS Maps last week.

[@FeoragForsyth]

An amazing resource. I wish there was an app version that let you look at the maps of where you are right now. Would even pay for that!

[@douglaskinloch6272]

@@FeoragForsyth On an iPad it's not bad, Safari is how I usually use it

[@koreastrongbestdriver5799]

7:25 so beautiful~~~^^ I watched your full vedio^^

[@johnlennox-pe2nq]

I subscribed, nice voice and well researched

[@robnewman6101]

R.I.P Prince Albert.

[@paulashe61]

Willie Tescos used do an amazing breakfast until they banned smoking and the customer base vanished. First step on a day of hangover meeting many friends from the night before from Broughton st

[@paulashe61]

Subsistence on Scotland st

[@FeoragForsyth]

You just know that's how it would be described on Fix My Street. And the council would get the bleme.

[@42apprentice]

Yes, I don’t know if it is still the same but in the 1990s lots of flats in the area were cash only sales as building societies wouldn’t lend on them due to subsidence issues.