Edinburgh Waverley Station

3.   Edinburgh Waverley Station is not as handsome as some other stations in this gallery although it has some splendid features such as the glass roofed ticket hall and the attached Balmoral Hotel. The main reason for this is that it is actually the amalgamation of no less than three stations. North Bridge Station, General Station and Canal Street Station were opened in 1846 and 1847. Edinburgh Waverley was formed from these in 1854.

It was extended at various times and a major rationalization and rebuilding took place between 1892 and 1900. Bits of the original separate stations can be found, as in this view, where the bricked up archways once decorated the outer wall of a train shed. You would not imagine that there are more platforms on the other side of it.

When Edinburgh was confined to what is now the Old Town, at the foot of the Castle Rock, where the station and Princes Street Gardens now stand, was a loch called Nor’Loch. This was drained when Princes Street and the rest of New Town were constructed and the Mound, a huge ramp of earth, was built to bridge the depression between the old and new parts of Edinburgh. When the railways came, the station was built on the bed of the loch and reached through a tunnel under the Mound.

These are two modern train sets belonging to Virgin Cross Country. This service links Edinburgh the Midlands and south west England.

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