Slateford railway station

Slateford railway station is a railway station serving Slateford in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is located on the Shotts Line from Glasgow Central to Edinburgh Waverley via Shotts. The station has two platforms, connected by a stairway footbridge, and CCTV. It is managed by Abellio ScotRail.

Slateford station

Slateford Scottish Gaelic: Àth na Sglèata[1]
Location	Slateford, Edinburgh Scotland
Coordinates	55.9265°N 3.2441°W
Grid reference	NT223710
Managed by	Abellio ScotRail
Platforms	2
Other information
Station code	SLA
History
Opened	January 1853[2]
Passengers
2015/16	36,316
2016/17	32,496
2017/18	34,004
2018/19	31,276
2019/20	31,992
Notes
Passenger statistics from the Office of Rail and Road

It is currently served, Monday to Saturday, by one Abellio ScotRail service each hour from Glasgow Central to Edinburgh Waverley. Two trains a day from Edinburgh terminate at Motherwell (one also starts back from there) and there is a single peak service to North Berwick in the morning and to Ayr via Carstairs in the evening. There is a two-hourly Sunday service from this station to Edinburgh and Glasgow since the 2012 timetable change.[3]

The staple passenger traction calling at this station is the Class 156 Super Sprinter; however, a Class 158 is also used on the Glasgow Central to Edinburgh Waverley express services with sometimes a Class 170 on the local Sunday service. As this station lies on the spur of the West Coast Main Line from Carstairs to Edinburgh, a variety of CrossCountry Class 220 Voyager, Avanti West Coast Class 221 Super Voyager, Class 390 Pendolino and London North Eastern Railway Class 801s are in use, along with Class 350 and Class 380 Desiro EMUs (the former on TransPennine Express trains to Manchester Airport & the latter on ScotRail Edinburgh to Ayr trains).

The line is heavily used by freight, including imported coal from Ayrshire to Drax Power Station, a daily intermodal service, departmental traffic and a daily train of loaded steel to the Dalzell works at Motherwell. Freight trains normally avoid the centre of Edinburgh and the busy station complex at Waverley by using the link from here onto the Edinburgh Suburban Line at Craiglockhart Junction, which also gives access to the marshalling yard at Millerhill.

When first opened by the Caledonian Railway in 1848, the line here ran through to a terminus known as Lothian Road. This was subsequently replaced by a larger depot at Edinburgh Princes Street in 1870, though it was more than twenty years thereafter before the station was fully completed. What is now the main line to the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway at Haymarket (originally known as the Duff Street Spur) was opened by the Caledonian company in 1853 and the station along with it.[4] The Caledonian had planned to use this link to access the E&G station at Haymarket and hence run through to Waverley, but it would be another century before this actually came to pass as agreement with the E&G over running powers couldn't be reached, forcing the Caledonian to develop its own terminus instead. The spur remained disused but intact until it was finally completed and commissioned in September 1964.

All passenger services now use this line to reach Waverley, as services over the original route to Princes Street were withdrawn by British Railways on 6 September 1965. Goods traffic ended the following year and the track was then lifted. Much of the formation has been used for road improvements, though the former junction site can still be made out.

References

1. Brailsford 2017, Gaelic/English Station Index.
2. Butt 1995, p. 213.
3. Table 224 National Rail timetable, May 2016
4. Railscot - Edinburgh Station and Branches www.railbrit.co.uk; Retrieved 2014-01-25

Sources

• Brailsford, Martyn, ed. (December 2017) [1987]. Railway Track Diagrams 1: Scotland & Isle of Man (6th ed.). Frome: Trackmaps. ISBN 978-0-9549866-9-8.
• Butt, R. V. J. (1995). The Directory of Railway Stations: details every public and private passenger station, halt, platform and stopping place, past and present (1st ed.). Sparkford: Patrick Stephens Ltd. ISBN 978-1-85260-508-7. OCLC 60251199.

External links

• Train times and station information for Slateford railway station from National Rail
• Video footage of Slateford Station