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Description

This a an important depot servicing trains used on the East Coast Main Line.

A signal box opened here in 1895 on the north side of the line. The was with the addition of an eastbound slow line on the approach to Portobello West Junction, always a bottleneck before the opening of the Lothian Lines (North British Railway) in 1915.

The box was replaced in 1909 when the North British Railway established a new set of carriage sidings here. (The depot celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2014, although it appears in the Ordnance Survey map revised in 1912-13 so perhaps it opened a little earlier.) These new sidings were located to the south of the main line and faced Edinburgh. There were a series of dead end sidings, approached from the west, reversal from which gave access to carriage sheds.

The layout of the depot was changed in 1978 in preparation for the introduction of the HSTs to the East Coast Main Line. A series of sheds now cover the area once occupied by the carriage sidings with some stabling roads to the south. Sidings run east on the south side of the main line through the site of Portobello [3rd] station to sidings generally used to stable 'The Leaf Train' and locomotives used for sleeper haulage.

The depot used to receive oil by train, from Grangemouth New Oil Terminal.

Prior to the railway use of the site this was a clay pit which was connected by a tramway to the Westbank Brick and Tile Works. This tramway ran north east under the North British Railway main line, passing under the bridge originally built to cross over the Figgate Burn.

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