There are also additional services, one from Motherwell to Edinburgh in the early morning with a late evening return and a morning peak service from Glasgow Central to Edinburgh via Carstairs, returning in the evening peak.

The line was and still 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.

There is also a crossover for access to Network Rail's Slateford Depot, which houses On Track Plant and Test Trains when they visit Edinburgh.

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.