The rope-worked tunnel proved a major handicap, and after the company had been taken over by the North British Railway, a longer but more convenient route was built round the eastern edge of the city at Abbeyhill.

All of the original route has been dismantled, except part of the line from Piershill to a waste consolidation depot at Powderhall which remained in use until it closed in 2016.

[2] Newhaven, to the west of Leith, also served as a ferry port; its modest harbour facilities were improved after 1792 by the building of a jetty, and in 1825 a basin was formed by the construction of an L-shaped pier.

Communication with the parts of Scotland further north, and also to the north east coast of England was secured by coastal shipping, and crossings to the southern coast of Fife, easily visible from Leith, were made by large and small boats, connecting with stage coaches.

As soon as authorisation was obtained, serious doubts were cast on the commercial viability of the scheme, and the landowners under whose property the line would run in tunnel proved troublesome.

A new and attractive station at Trinity was part of the scheme; the line ran west from there, turning north on to the pier at Granton.

[10] The tunnel from Scotland Street was 1,052 yards (962 m) in length, descending at 1 in 27; it was gas lit throughout, and operated by a stationary steam engine and endless cable.

The work was difficult due to shifting sand under the New Town, and the demands of property owners who were concerned for the stability of their buildings.

Locomotive haulage had replaced the horses on the open air sections of the railway, but were retained for shunting at Princes Street.

[4] Robert Louis Stevenson, reminiscing about a boyhood visit to Edinburgh, wrote that "The tunnel to the Scotland Street Station, the sight of the two guards upon the brake, the thought of its length and the many ponderous edifices and open thoroughfares above, were certainly things of paramount impressiveness to a young mind.

The EL&GR had run out of money during the construction work and needed a wealthy sponsor, so on 27 July 1847 it was taken over by the Edinburgh and Northern Railway,[note 4] which was in the process of building its line to Perth and the southern shore of the Firth of Tay.

As the E&NR was completing its main lines, it changed its name to the Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway on 1 April 1849.

Their train left in an eastward direction and ran across Fife to Ferryport-on-Craig, later renamed Tayport, where they changed to a second ferry boat to cross the Tay.

[5] The inconvenience of the rope-worked tunnel section from Waverley station to Scotland Street was soon made obsolete by advancing technology.

The only connection for the transfer of goods wagons from the developing Scottish railway network was through the very sharply curved spur at Waverley station.

In 1850 an improved connection between Canal Street and North Bridge stations was made, Edinburgh City Council objections having been satisfied.

The point of convergence with the original line was not far short of Trinity, so that a substantial part of the earlier route was by-passed.

[5][11][4] Scotland Street tunnel was later used to store wagons, then for commercial mushroom production (1887-1929), and as an air raid shelter during World War II.

The transit to Fife and Dundee involving a ferry passage from Granton was a serious inconvenience, and a bridge had long been proposed.

This did not take place as quickly as the North British Railway had hoped; nonetheless for some time there were four stations in the short distance from Abbeyhill to Powderhall.

A double track line from the London Road Junction was built to a new Leith Central station, which opened on 1 July 1903.

Joining in the Granton Harbour railway network, goods interchange with the Caledonian Railway also took place at Granton over the harbour lines, as for some decades the two companies had no direct connection in Edinburgh (other than the Haymarket connection which was unsuitable for goods wagon transfer due to congestion).

The development of passenger tramways in the Edinburgh conurbation in the early years of the twentieth century eroded the suburban railway business, and when economies were required during World War I, Powderhall and Leith Walk stations were closed at the beginning of 1917.

ground, but by this time the Leith Central branch was nearing its end: on 7 April 1952 the timetabled passenger service closed, although the Easter Road football special trains continued until 1967.

Granton gas works continued to forward outward goods traffic, chiefly naphtha, sporadically until 1986.