Edinburgh Waverley railway station
Waverley bridge is shown at the bottom right, North Bridge in the middle heading right (southward) to the old town. Arthur's Seat is in the background.
Waverley Station is the main railway station in the Scottish capital Edinburgh. Covering an area of over 25 acres in the centre of the city, it is the second largest mainline railway station in the United Kingdom.
The station is located in steep, narrow valley between the city's medieval Old Town and the 19th century newtown. Princes Street, the city's premier shopping street, runs along one side of the station. The valley is bridged by 1897's North Bridge (a three span iron and steel bridge, which passes high above the station's eastern section) and Waverley Bridge (which, by means of ramps, affords one of the main entrances to the station). This valley was formerly a freshwater lake, the Nor' Loch; latterly a fetid embarrassment to the Newtown's Scottish Enlightenment developers, a programme of civil engineering works completed draining it by 1920.
Trains leave Waverley in two directions:
- Eastward is a limited metropolitan service and the East Coast Main Line. The proposed Waverley Line, which will reconnect several towns in the Scottish Borders to the railway network, will also enter Edinburgh from the east.
- Westward the line runs through a cutting near the cliffs of Edinburgh Castle and through Princes Street Gardens. It then passes through a tunnel before emerging at Haymarket Station. From there mainlines lead North to Fife over the Forth Rail Bridge, West to Glasgow, and Northwest to Stirling and Dunblane.
History
Following the drainage of the Nor'Loch, and with the explosion of railway travel in Britain underway, three railway companies each built stations near one another in the valley, opening over the course of the 1840s. The collective name "Waverley", after the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, was used for the three from around 1854. The Scott Monument stands in Princes Street Gardens near to the entrance to Waverley Station. In 1868 the North British Railway company acquired the stations of its rivals, demolished all three, and built the victorian station that remains in use today.
Current and future uses of the station
The station's large hotel, The North British Hotel (which was opened in 1902), was sold by British Rail to the Forte hotel group, who undertook an extensive programme of renovations before reopening it under the (locally controvertial) name The Balmoral Hotel.
The station's large size, and the unusual topography of its surroundings, means that it contains a large amount of valuable, centrally located land. The station's successive owners, British Rail, Railtrack, and its current owner Network Rail have been criticised for underutilising the valuable city-centre spaces available within. The Waverley Shopping Centre, which occupies a column of space nestling between Waverley Station, Waverley Bridge, and Princes Street, opened in the early 1990s.
Plans have been drawn up for the latest, long awaited redevelopment of the station. This will improve facilities and provide more through-platforms for trains passing from the East Coast Main Line to the rest of the Scottish network.