St Leonards railway station (Scotland)

St Leonards
St Leonards
General information
Location	City of Edinburgh
Managed by	North British
Line(s)	Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway
Key dates
2 June 1832	Opened
1846	Closed
1 June 1860	Reopened
30 September 1860	Closed to passengers - site reused as a goods depot

St. Leonards railway station is a closed railway station on the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway. It was Edinburgh's first station. The railway was built in 1831 to transport coal from the mining towns south of the city; and the following year opened passenger services. St. Leonards was the terminus for the south of the city and was named after the nearby region.

Passenger services ceased in 1846, when the North British Railway opened the station at North Bridge which later became Waverley, into which the services from Dalkeith were re-routed via Portobello. The station reopened briefly in 1860, but closed again within a few months. The railhead continued to see heavy use in its original intended role as a coal yard, until the area was redeveloped in the early 1960s.

Both the coal depot and the railway line are now gone, but the route of the line can still be followed, protected from development by the construction of a cyclepath where the tracks ran.