June 2, 2021 - Edinburgh’s lost ‘Innocent Railway’ was the first ever underground line built in Scotland.

The St Leonards Tunnel, built between 1827 and 1830, is used today by locals as a thoroughfare for runners and cyclists, but its historic beginnings are sometimes forgotten.

The underground tunnel was built as part of the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway to transport coal from the pits and ended at Edinburgh’s first ever railway station, St Leonard’s Station.

Today, the old railway station is a modern residential development but Lothian Region Council saved the tunnel when they bought it in the 1980s as part of a deal with British Rail to purchase disused railway lies in North Edinburgh.

The atmospheric tunnel is now part of Edinburgh’s Cycle Network and the U.K. National Cycle Network’s Route 1 but in its heyday it was part of the industrial revolution.

Edinburgh isn’t known as Auld Reekie for nothing and the capital was consuming 350,000 tonnes of coal a year by 1830.

Getting the coal into Edinburgh by horse-and-cart along cobbled roads proved to be problematic.