page_title: Waverley Route
section_title: Motive power and sheds
hierarchical_section_title: Waverley Route / Infrastructure and services / Motive power and sheds
caption_attribution_description: English: An 0-6-0 Dock Tank at St Margarets Locomotive Depot. The LNER (ex-North British) had two major locomotive depots in Edinburgh, St Margarets east of Waverley Station and Haymarket west of it. St Margarets was grossly inadequate and over crowded, to be extent that part was on one side of the main lines and the other across the tracks, so that men and engines had to go to and fro between the frequent passing trains. Moreover, the allocation of some 208 locomotives (in 1947) had to be dispersed, especially on Sundays, at several other sites on the east side of Leith. The Depot provided motive power for both passenger and freight trains on the ECML to Berwick and Newcastle also the Waverley Route to Carlisle, as well as a numerous more local passenger, freight and shunting jobs. The 1947 allocation comprised:- 3 2-6-2, 16 2-8-0 (11 ex-WD, 5 LMS-type), 15 2-6-0, 25 4-4-0, 71 0-6-0 (5 different classes), 6 4-4-2T, 1 2-6-4T, 13 2-6-2T, 2 2-4-2T, 18 0-6-2T, 25 0-6-0T, 13 0-4-0T, with an remarkable variety of ex-NB, other LNER and non-LNER classes. Here, ex-NB Reid J88 0-6-0T No. 8334 is resting in the roofless roundhouse on the north side of the main line: its work was shunting in Leith and Granton Docks or pilot duties at Heriothill and Lochend: all J88's and the 0-4-0T's had 'dumb' buffers.
context_page_description: The Waverley Route was a railway line that ran south from Edinburgh, through Midlothian and the Scottish Borders, to Carlisle. The line was built by the North British Railway; the stretch from Edinburgh to Hawick opened in 1849 and the remainder to Carlisle opened in 1862. The line was nicknamed after the immensely popular Waverley Novels, written by Sir Walter Scott.
  The line was closed in 1969, as a result of the Beeching Report. Part of the line, from Edinburgh to Tweedbank, reopened in September 2015. The reopened railway is known as the Borders Railway.
context_section_description: A large number of locomotive classes were used on the Waverley Route, many of which were not designed for the line. Among the earliest locomotives to be used on the line were Hawthorn double-framed 0-6-0 mineral engines ordered on 28 October 1845 whose principal task was to haul coal on the E&DR. Known as Dalkeith Coal engines, these were spartan machines without weather boards or sideboards to protect the crew against inclement conditions, although whistles were provided, one of which stood against the driver's ear. These were supplemented by eight Hawthorn passenger 2-4-0s in 1847 upon the opening of the Hawick extension. In 1873, Thomas Wheatley, the NBR's Locomotive Superintendent, introduced the 420 class. Four engines were built at Cowlairs railway works which were capable for handling light trains but inadequate for the heavier rolling stock used by the Midland Railway on its Anglo-Scottish expresses once the Settle-Carlisle line opened. A more capable locomotive was introduced in 1875 by Wheatley's successor Dugald Drummond whose 4-4-0 476 class was the largest and most powerful locomotive in Great Britain at the time, as well as one of the very few satisfactory four-coupled bogie express engines on the network on the 1870s. The new locomotives were known as the Abbotsford Class after no. 479 which bore that name.
   
  From 1907, most principal services were worked by the 4-4-2 Atlantics designed by William Reid and built by the North British Locomotive Company. The Atlantics were intended to put an end to costly double-heading on the Waverley Route but suffered from teething problems which endured nearly two years, after which the class proved to be excellent performers, particularly after they were superheated in 1915. The Atlantics are considered as the finest performing engines associated with the Waverley Route until the introduction in the late 1920s of Sir Nigel Gresley's A3 Pacifics. The first A3 to visit the line was No. 2580 Shotover on 26 February 1928. The Pacifics were at times supplemented by A4s and it was No. 4490 Empire of India which hauled the Royal Train in the early 1940s when George VI inspected the troops at Stobs Camp. In later years, B1s, V2s and Britannia Class locomotives worked Waverley Route trains, with the last steam-hauled service being Britannia No. 70022 Tornado on the 7:44 pm Carlisle-Edinburgh train on 14 November 1967. Diesels became important on the line from c. 1960, with the expresses worked by Class 45 and Class 46 Peaks and Class 47s and Deltics appearing on the farewell specials. Local trains were mainly worked by Class 26s supplemented by Class 25s and Class 37s, while freight services were hauled by a variety of classes including Clayton Class 17s.
  The Waverley Route had a small number of minor engine sheds and two major sheds at its northern and southern extremities. The smaller sheds were at Galashiels, St Boswells, Riccarton Junction and Hardengreen Junction; Hawick had a larger facility which was important for the operation of the Waverley Route and its branch lines. St Margarets and Carlisle Canal were the major sheds; St Margarets had been the original NBR shed in the Edinburgh area and remained an important facility well into the 1960s. Although smaller than St Margarets, Carlisle Canal played a vital role in the operation of the Waverley Route and even with the line's decline post-nationalisation, there were still over 50 locomotives stabled there in the mid-1950s.
caption: NBR F class No. 8334 at St Margarets Locomotive Depot in 1948
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "EPSON scanner image", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "157", "Image YResolution": "157", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:04:26 22:53:29", "Image ExifOffset": "204", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "342", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6499", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2203", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1458"}