Leith Central Railway Station - Reuse As A DMU Depot

Reuse As A DMU Depot

Following closure to passengers, the station was adapted to become a motive power depot (MPD) for the new Swindon-built Inter City diesel multiple unit train sets used on express services (from 1956) between Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Queen Street. These trainsets are often mistakenly referred to as Class 126 units but the individual vehicles being numbered in the 79xxx series means that they never received a BR TOPS designation. The Class 126 vehicles were actually the later 51xxx/59xxx/51xxx series 3-car trainsets built by Swindon Works for Stranraer and Ayrshire services from Glasgow St Enoch ( later Glasgow Central ). By the beginning of the 1970s the Inter City units were becoming unreliable and in May 1971 they were replaced by trains consisting of 6 coaches worked in top 'n tail mode by a pair of Class 27 locomotives. This change rendered Leith Central redundant as a depot. It was finally closed completely in 1972 and became derelict.

In the 1980s the derelict station was a haven for drug addicts, this being alluded to in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. In one scene, the character Begbie sees his alcoholic father living in the station. The macabre joke is that the people who are there are all train-spotting, despite the fact of it being abandoned since the early 1970s. This is where the title of the book comes from. The large trainshed was subsequently demolished and all that remains is the terminal building and clock tower.