Scotland Street Tunnel

This disused tunnel entrance is the North end of a tunnel that heads 1000 yards up the hill to the long gone Canal Street Terminus, adjacent and at right angles to Waverley Station. Built in 1847 it operated as a cable hauled extension into the town of the Edinburgh, Leith and Newhaven Railway Company service to Granton, Leith and via ferry to Fife.

Both Scotland Street and Canal Street stopped being used for passenger traffic in 1868 by when with the amalgamation of railway companies an alternative route without the use of the cable system was available via Abbeyhill to Trinity from Waverley Station.

Robert Louis Stephenson wrote of the tunnel, "The tunnel to the Scotland Street Station, the sight of the trains shooting out of its dark maw with the two guards upon the brake, the thought of its length and the many ponderous edifices and open thoroughfares above, were certainly of paramount impressiveness to a young mind.
It was a subterranean passage, although of a larger bore than we were accustomed to in Ainsworth's novels and these two words, 'subterranean passage,' were in themselves an irresistible attraction and seemed to bring us nearer in spirit to the heroes we loved and the black rascals we secretly aspired to imitate."