page_title: Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway
section_title: First proposals
hierarchical_section_title: Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway / History / First proposals
caption_attribution_description: English: The railway passes the former Drybrough Brewery which is now part of a business park.
context_page_description: The Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway was a railway company that built an east-west railway on the southern margin of Edinburgh, Scotland, primarily to facilitate the operation of heavy goods and mineral traffic across the city. The line opened in 1884. Although its route was rural at the time, suburban development quickly caught up and passenger carryings on the line were buoyant; the passenger service operated on a circular basis through Edinburgh Waverley railway station.
  Bus and tram competition hit the passenger service badly as the twentieth century progressed, and in 1962 the line closed to local passenger trains. It continues in use for freight traffic and diverted and excursion passenger trains.
  There have frequently been proposals to reintroduce the local passenger service on the line, but as of 2015 there is no active commitment to do so.
context_section_description: The congestion was obviously serious, with no apparent solution on the route through Waverley. The line lay in a valley between very high ground on an east-west alignment, and any railway by-passing Waverley would have to be aligned south of the volcanic plug that forms Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat. In 1865 the NBR proposed a line from Haymarket to connect with the former Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway near its terminus on the south side of the city. The Dalkeith line, now in NBR control, connected near Niddrie (often spelt Niddry at the time) with the NBR main line to Berwick and the Dalkeith route to the mineral fields. The Caledonian Railway too saw this as an opportunity to secure an advantage over its rival, and in the same year it too proposed a similar route from its own lines near Gorgie to Niddrie, intending to claim running powers over the NBR lines to get access to the Lothian coal fields. However neither of these schemes was progressed.
caption: The line at Duddingston Road West, Craigmillar
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