This thread was originally written and published in March 2019. It has been lightly edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

Powderhall, one of Edinburgh’s lesser known railway stations. Only open 21 years from 1895, it closed in 1916 (along with a number of less patronised stations) as a war economy measure and was never re-opened

As we can see from that photo though, the station buildings and platforms remained in situ and in repair for decades after (I’m not sure if it was ever used for “specials” e.g. to the adjacent sports grounds.

The building in the back of the photograph is the ominously named “CORPORATION DESTRUCTOR” – in a time when nearly all household waste was burned in domestic fireplaces, larger or non-combustible items would be carted to the destructor to meet their fate.

The baronial style red sandstone building on Broughton Road was the stables for the horses that pulled the city’s “scaffie carts”, scaffie being the Scots word for a “scavenger” or street cleaner. Scaffie has become an adjective in its own right for something that is perhaps of substandard, dirty or cheap appearance, and gives us the perjorative verb “scaff”, for an unfortunate soul who is deemed to look a bit scaffie.

Next to the Destructor, The former access to the station from Broughton Road is quite obvious when you look at it. staircases on either side of a retaining wall which has 3 recesses for timetables / advertising posters*.

* = you will see at the end I was wrong about these 3 features.

The Destructor had its own incinerator (chimney obvious on the map and the photo), and was replaced in 1971 by a more modern refuse sorting, compacting and (often forgotten) incineration plant. See large chimney here and furnace at its base.

And by 1986, the incinerator had been shut down and the chimney and plant demolished as the burning of all kinds of waste in an urban environment came to be seen for what it was – a stupid and dangerous idea on environmental and public health grounds.

The railway was served a life extension at exactly the time as it was about to close and be lifted due to the cessation of freight traffic (oil trains to/from a depot at Granton), in the form of “binliner” trains of compacted landfill waste to Oxwellmains in East Lothian.

There’s a photo here of the back of the incineration plant, and the overgrown platforms of Powderhall station and here is the site being prepared in 1989 for re-purposing as a waste-to-rail transfer station

Here’s a striking aerial photo of the Powderhall incinerator at work, just look at that haze it’s casting over the city (bear in mind there is a primary school and nursery directly over Broughton Road from the plant).

The name Powderhall reputedly comes from the Powder Hall, a house and powder mill set up by the once powerful local landowners the Balfours (see also Pilrig House, Balfour Street, Robert Louis Stevenson etc.)

The mill was built in 1695, here it is on the 1750s Roy map of the Lowlands of Scotland

For most of its life though, Powderhall was a collection of big hooses set in pleasant gardens and tree-lined market gardens, replete with their own curling ponds. The land was gradually sold off, first for a sand extraction pit and a sports field .

And later cleared entirely to build tenements, factories and the Destructor. Notice the march of the tenements along Dunedin Street to house all the workers for the burgeoning Victorian industries.

But it remained a recreation facility too, there were municipal bowling and putting greens and of course the stadium, initially for athletics and greyhound racing, later better known as the home of the Edinburgh Monarchs speedway team who moved here in the 1960s from Meadowbank and stayed until the 1990s.

The stadium went through a series of speculative owners in the early 90s, lost the rights to greyhound racing, the Monarchs fortunes waned, before inevitably finding itself in the hands of offshore property developers and being cleared to build housing

My uncle is a massive Monarchs fan and occasionally used to take me. My outstanding memories are of failing to get my head around the scoring system (you had to note it all down in the programme), eating a cold Scotch pie and the appropriately gunpowder-like smell of the fumes

Speedway persists nearby though, on the other side of the tracks at Redbraes Park on the site of that odd pond in the maps. Cycle speedway that is (which at one time had about 10 tracks across Edinburgh).

Powderhall Stadium was also home to football (Leith Athletic and later Edinburgh City) in the 1920s and 30s, the football pitch can be clearly seen on this excellent Britain from Above photo.

The stadium was built on the site of the original sports grounds in 1927. The “Powderhall Grounds” were later famed as the training and racing home of Olympic champion short-distance runner Eric Liddell while he studied at Edinburgh University (this pic is Stamford Bridge though)

I’ve found a picture of Powder Hall house in Old & New Edinburgh, a typical early Georgian villa at first glance, but actually it was a bit earlier than that and the wonky placement and scaling of windows and tacked-on extensions belies it being rather older than that

The engraving matches the 1849 OS Town Plan very closely though, with the large extension to the right .

I found a couple of other photos of Powderhall station so thought I’d add them here for reference. I guess this is 1900-1910ish.

Same with this, I reckon the bearded man in uniform in the foreground is the same as in the previous photo.

And after closure, could be any time after WW1 to post-WW2. Notice that there’s smoke coming out the chimney of the platform building. I wonder if somebody lived there or if the building was leased out for other purposes.

What I thought were 3 old poster recesses are the cut-off remains of the 3 windows of the old ticket hall.

Zooming in a bit on a bigger screen, I wonder if this is a wee bit later and during the wartime closure. Place looks a bit abandoned, light over door removed? Posters in windows maybe not that railwayish, and that on the pinboard appears to announce “The Sale of xyz”.

Judging by maps, this building was demolished between 1931 and 1944.

Here’s a #NowAndThen image that shows what is now missing at Powderhall station, and how the current bridge parapet is actually remodelled from the remains of the old booking hall.

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