Last summer, while visiting Scotland, I took a room at the University of Edinburgh's Pollock Halls. While out jogging along Holyrood Park Road, I discovered a hiking and bicycle trail that appeared to be an old railway roadbed. It ended immediately after it went through a tunnel right under Pollock Halls and came out in a relatively new housing development. Does anyone know what railway this might have been and when it was converted to a bike trail?
I did a search on walking trails in Scotland and found this out. The line in question was called the "Innocent Railway" and was built between Dalkeith and Leith. It used draft horses for motive power long after most railways had adopted steam. Its first engine was a stationary steam engine to relieve the horses and haul the wagons up the steep tunnel that I was jogging in. Had I run the other direction a few miles, I would have encountered a preserved bridge that used some cast iron girders to support the sleepers. Here is a photo I found. The part I was on was converted to a hike and bike trail in the 1980's.
Have you got a link to the info you found, I tried to look into it, but the only railway map book I have that covers that area has a maze of lines around Leith, but no other place names, and no Dalkeith, so I ran out of inspiration!
Here is one of the links. However it does not seem to be working at this moment. http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/features/featurefirst7864.html Some other towns it went through were listed as Duddingston, Craigmillar, Niddrie and Newcraighall. I also copied this off of it.
Russel, I notice in that photo the first 3 girders are of the same design(from left to right),the 4th looks to be a add on.Maybe the first two were for pedestrians/drafts horses & 2nd/3rd for the railway?Just an idle observation. An interesting find though.
