From the Tram

York Place to Edinburgh Airport

The following is a short guide to sights you may see from the window of the new Edinburgh Tram, taking you smoothly into and out of one of the world’s most beautiful capital cities. The tram is frequent, easy to access and comfortable to ride. Remember to buy your ticket or validate your pass before you board. Machines are available on each tramstop, which take only coins or cards. Lothian Buses daytickets are valid on stops between Ingliston and York Place, with premium fares payable for the Airport stop.

Each tramstop carries a poem on its information board written by Ron Butlin, the ‘Edinburgh Makar’ (makar is Scots for poet.) The poems are given here under each stop.

York Place

First stop on the line, or the last? Into the future or out of the past?

We get on, we get off – that’s all we can know, for our journey started long, long ago.

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

Edinburgh Tram’s eastern terminus is beside the church building of St Paul’s and St George’s Episcopal congregation, its home built between 1816 and 1818, extended in 1890, and completely upgraded in 2012. On the south side of York Place is the Conan Doyle pub, with the statue of his famous fictional character, Sherlock Holmes nearby in Picardy Place, bearing witness to this as the home of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though no building resided in by him stands any longer.

Just round the corner from the tram stop to the south is St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, looking down on bronze sculptures by Edinburgh artist Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. Nearby are the St James’s Centre stores and the Omni Centre, with cinemas, restaurants and leisure facilities. A short way downhill is the Playhouse Theatre, which regularly hosts visiting big-budget musicals.

Radiating away from York Place, to the north-east runs Leith Walk, still planned to see trams running along its length in the future to the regenerated dock area of the port of Leith. To the north-west runs Broughton Street, down to Canonmills, Inverleith and the beautiful Botanic Gardens.

Leaving the York Place stop, the tram heads west along past Georgian doorways and facades until it turns southward onto North St Andrew St. To the west (right of the tram) stands the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Recently refurbished, this houses the painted likenesses of many leading Scottish figures, historic and contemporary.

The tram climbs slightly past Harvey Nichols store and Edinburgh Bus Station onto the open plain of St Andrew Square to reach:

St Andrew Square

Scotland is a green island too. Here we’re hemmed in by cliffs of sheerest glass

and heavy-duty stonework.

Let’s make invisible waves as we rumble a small earthquake across this Tarmac-Black Sea!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

The tram stops in front of the Dundas Mansion, set back in its garden fronting the east side of St Andrew Square (left of the tram); it was built in 1774 of Ravelston stone from a nearby quarry to the west of the city. Features of the building are found on the Royal Bank’s ‘Ilay’ series of banknotes. This was the home of Lord Dundas, but from 1825, became the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland. It stands at the eastern end of the axis running east-west along George Street, the central street of Craig’s design, joining St Andrew Square in the east to Charlotte Square in the west. In the centre of St Andrew Square, which has been recently developed as a popular public space, stands Melville’s Column, commemorating Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville; a canny Tory politician and supporter of the slave trade, his control of the political establishment at a time when monarchy largely shunned its northern capital led to his being nicknamed ‘Harry the Ninth, uncrowned King of Scotland’! From the square, a glimpse may be caught along George St as far as the dome of West Register House, in Charlotte Square, due west of Melville’s Column.

From the St Andrew Square stop, the nearby bus station is easily accessible and Waverley railway station is two minutes’ walk down onto Princes Street and down the recently-added escalators on Waverley Steps below the great clock tower of the Balmoral Hotel, whose clock is kept three minutes fast to encourage tardy travellers to make their train!

The tram now heads south, past Waverley Station, turning onto Princes Street.

Princes St is the southern boundary of the New Town. Started in 1775, the extensive Georgian development was the brainchild of James Craig, who designed a grid-pattern of streets and squares which has become renowned throughout the world for its architectural beauty and excellence. Sadly, much of the original architecture of Princes St has been lost to modern development, though examples of the craft of Craig can be viewed to the north of Princes St.

The tram continues along Princes Street, with East Princes Gardens to the south. Pointing into the sky from the gardens just past Waverley Bridge is the Scott Monument, memorial to Scotland’s great author and advocate, Sir Walter Scott. The stonework still carries the soot of ages, as it would be too damaging to the fabric to clean it in the way most Edinburgh facades have been treated. The figures adorning the heights of the needle are characters from Scott’s novels, with the statue of Scott sitting on the chair at its base, beside one of his dog.

On the ‘shops side’, the tram passes Jenner’s department store; founded in 1838 by Charles Kennington and Charles Jenner, and known originally as ‘Kennington and Jenner’, this was, until its acquisition by House of Fraser in 2005, the oldest independent store in Scotland. Beyond its doors is its great hall, with wooden galleries, graced each December by a huge Christmas tree. The store features in the 2011 animated feature film ‘The Illusionist’, by French animator, Sylvain Chomet.

After passing by the classic frontage (to the left of the tram) of the Royal Scottish Academy, the steep hill leading up to the Old Town from Princes St is The Mound. It was initially an impromptu pile of rubble added to from the excavation of the New Town, the idea of George Boyd, later adopted by the city as a main link between the two sections of the population.

The tram now arrives at:

Princes St

The doors hiss open – and the city centre’s yours! The Castle, the Gardens, the Galleries and shops.

But one stop only here – so make the most of it!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

The tram stop at Princes St gives access to all the city centre attractions; a healthy walk uphill to the castle, the Royal Scottish Academy and National Gallery in their classical splendour at the Mound, and the shops of the north side.

The tram now continues west along Princes St with its shops to one side and to the other the famous gardens; these were originally the Nor’ Loch, a dank stretch of water forming city defences until drained in the 1780s to be for use of Princes St residents, becoming a public park in the 1820s.

The crown of the outlook here is, of course, the castle. There has been settlement on the crag since before the Romans, when the Welsh-speaking British tribe, the Gododdin, had their northern fortress here above the thick forest all around. The now-familiar outline of the ‘fortress on a hill’, or Dùn Èideann as it is in the Gaelic, came to its present form in the late sixteenth century, after English Queen Elizabeth’s guns demolished King David’s tower (still depicted in the city’s coat of arms) in 1573 in the effort to remove Mary Queen of Scots’ supporters from their hideout.

Running down the volcanic tail of the Old Town ridge from the Castle is the Esplanade; one sees the fancy tenements of Ramsay Lane, then the two towers of New College, the theology school of the University of Edinburgh which also houses the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland. Next is the dome of the ‘Old Bank’, the Bank of Scotland, founded in 1698 and here since 1805, with the crown of St Giles’ High Kirk on the High Street in the background.

Giving a glance up to the north into the New Town from Princes St just at St John’s at the end of the gardens, one should catch sight of Charlotte Square, the western end of George Street, major thoroughfare of the New Town. At number 6 is Bute House, official residence of Scotland’s First Minister, used to host visiting dignitaries to Scotland.

On the corner of Lothian Road stands St John’s Episcopal Church. Beyond St John’s is the steeple of St Cuthbert’s Church, oldest Christian site in the city, dating back to St Cuthbert’s mission to the Northumbrians here in the 650s AD. The tram now passes the foot of Lothian Road and the Caledonian Hotel, whose frontage was that of the former Princes Street railway station closed in 1967, to enter Shandwick Place and the next stop at:

West End – Princes Street

If there’s time before your tram, enjoy this pause in the city’s hustle-bustle, push-and-press.

Let the sky, the trees and the pleasing curve of crescent soothe your downtown stress…

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

The West End stop is located on Shandwick Place, between the elegant Coates Crescent to the south and Atholl Cresent to the north. They were part of the western extension of the New Town of Edinburgh in 1825, Coates Crescent being the location for a statue of William Ewart Gladstone, Liberal Member of Parliament for Midlothian and Prime Minister to Queen Victoria.

From West End, the shops and bus stops of Shandwick Place are a short walk, as are the Caledonian Hotel, Lothian Road and the Exchange financial quarter. From West End, the shops and bus stops of Shandwick Place are a short walk, as are the Caledonian Hotel, Lothian Road and the Exchange financial quarter. The tower of the former St George’s West Church rises above the street to the east of the stop; the building is the new meeting place of Charlotte Chapel, a long-established Edinburgh Evangelical church.

The tram moves onto West Maitland Street, giving a glimpse to the right (north) along Palmerston Place to the frontage of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, founded in 1874, and its two western towers, named ‘Mary’ and ‘Barbara’ after the Walker sisters who endowed the cathedral, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Entering Haymarket, before Ryrie’s bar and Haymarket Station, to the south (left) of the tramway stands the Haymarket War Memorial clock tower. It was placed here in 1922 to honour among others the footballers of Heart of Midlothian FC who died in the First World War, having volunteered together to serve in the 16^th Royal Scots (McCrae’s) battalion. Removed during the building of the tramway, the tower was reinstated to its original place in time for the 2014 centenary of the outbreak of WWI.

The tram now crosses Haymarket, a major junction to the west of the city centre, where roads converge from Glasgow, Lanark and the south-west. Within easy reach are St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Palmerston Place and the Modern Art Gallery.

Ryrie’s Bar, to the left, stands on the site of the original Haymarket tron, or weigh-house, but since the 1840’s has been an inn, at first, called The Haymarket. However, following its recasting in baronial style in 1868 and its extension under the sponsorship of Ryrie’s whisky merchants in 1906, it became known as Ryrie’s Bar, the name it still bears. Approaching Haymarket tram stop, just before the new station development, is the structure of one of the oldest railway station buildings in Scotland still in use, dating from 1843. This was the original terminus of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, first major railway in the country.

The tram now reaches:

Haymarket

Nearby, five roads meet and snarl and clash, (traffic-tangles, red lights, criss-cross lanes

and criss-cross drivers),

While we go two-rail smoothly gliding past. Let’s give them all a wave!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

The tram stops beside the new concourse of the railway station, providing excellent interchange with national rail as well as local and long-distance buses and coaches.

On leaving the stop, the tram descends now past office buildings on the last of its street tracks; from here to the airport it runs on its own reserved section of line. As it leaves Haymarket Yards, from the tram, to the east (left) can be seen the platforms of Haymarket Station, one of the busiest stations in Scotland, and second most used in the city after Waverley. Recently entirely upgraded, the station boasts new, spacious concourse and platform access by both lift and escalator. Beyond the station is the tall chimney stack of the former Caledonian Distillery, closed in 1988 and now converted into flats in the old stone buildings.

To the north (right) of the tramway here, beyond the new buildings beside the reserved track after Haymarket, the green domes of William Playfair’s 1851 building for Donaldson’s School for the Deaf can be seen. The school existed here for a century and a half, until moving in 2008 to Linlithgow in West Lothian. The building is slated to be converted into housing by its new owner, Cala Homes.

To the south (left) of the tramway, on the skyline across the railway before reaching Haymarket Scotrail Depot can be seen the white metal superstructure of Tynecastle Stadium, home of Heart of Midlothian FC. Seating around 17,500, there has been a stadium here since 1886, thought Hearts itself was formed in 1874, when it played on the Meadows and then at Powderhall.

To reach the next stop at Murrayfield Stadium, the tram skirts Haymarket Scotrail railway depot. In the days of steam, this was one of the main sheds for crack steam express engines to and from London Kings Cross, hauling, among others, the daily ‘Flying Scotsman’ train; on occasion, the shed staff refuelled and serviced the ‘Mallard’, the world’s fastest steam locomotive. Today it handles diesel units for the national railway.

Murrayfield Stadium

Even when the pitch and seats are empty, you can hear the hush, the roar that fills the stadium –

Let’s hear it loud enough for Scotland!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

Murrayfield is the world-famous home of Scottish Rugby. It is the largest-capacity stop on the line, designed to cope with thousands of passengers using it for international games as well as for music events at the 67,000-seater stadium, the largest in Scotland, and one of the largest in the UK. It is also the only elevated station on the route. Nearby is located the Murrayfield Ice Rink, Edinburgh’s home of skating and ice hockey.

Murrayfield has been home to the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) since March 1925; previously, internationals were played at Inverleith. During the war, the stadium was requisitioned by the Royal Army Service Corps as a depot, but from 1944, the army sports authorities organised international matches between Scotland and England, out of which grew the present six nations competition. The stadium was rebuilt in its present form, with floodlighting added, in 1994.

On leaving the stop, to the south across the main railway line lie the pharmaceutical works of McFarlan Smith, a subsidiary of Johnson Matthey; the history of the company goes back to Duncan Flockhart, the chemist who supplied Sir James Simpson with chloroform in 1847 for his pioneering work in anaesthesia. Adjacent to this is the North British Distillery, producing grain whisky for blending, and producing the occasional malty aroma once so familiar throughout the city. The distillery is one of only a few remaining in lowland Scotland.

As the tram heads west from Murrayfield, it gives views onto the practice pitches before crossing the Water of Leith on approach to:

Balgreen

Beware that bricked-up block of darkness they call JENNERS DEPOSITORY!

They’ll tell you tales of locks, bolts and security, tales of storage. Personal storage.

Best to pray your tram’s already on its way…

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

Coming from the Gaelic ‘Baile na Greine’ or ‘Baile Grianain’, meaning Town of the Sun, or Sunny Town, Balgreen village had a suburban railway station on the short branch line to Corstorphine, closed in 1968. The trackbed of the branch, veering away to the north from the tram stop, is now a pleasant walk and cycleway leading to Pinkhill, with access to Edinburgh Zoo, and to Corstorphine itself.

Beside the stop stands Jenners’ Depository, once the warehouse for ‘Edinburgh’s Harrods’, Jenners’ department store on Princes Street. It is now used as personal storage units.

A short walk back from the stop, running south-north under the tram line and accessible along Baird Drive as it approaches the grounds of Murrayfield, is the Water of Leith, Edinburgh’s little river, flowing from the hills down to the docks, and through a deep valley which skirts the city centre. Following the river to the south brings one to Saughton Park, with its rose gardens and, for the active, one of Edinburgh’s skateboarding venues. To the north, the Water of Leith walkway leads by the stadium through Roseburn to the Gallery of Modern Art and Stockbridge,

As the tram leaves Balgreen, it passes the green expanse of Carrick Knowe golf course which can be clearly viewed to the north, with golfers playing the ancient game, known in Scotland since the fifteenth century. Soon the line climbs to cross the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, giving good views towards the city centre in the east, south to the hills, with the green-tiled steeple of St Salvador’s Episcopal Church in the foreground, and north to Corstorphine Hill, on the slopes of which is situated Edinburgh Zoo. Coming down the bridge embankment, the tram approaches:

Saughton

Here the tram grows up into an adult train, running on the straight and narrow.

Citywards it goes to seek its fortune, then returns,

Urged on by the winds of change, winds of opportunity. Always the wind, the wind, the wind…

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

The tram stop serves Saughton House, the nearby Scottish Government offices, and local housing. Directly to the north of the tram stop, the main line railway from Edinburgh divides into two, with the far-away branch giving access for trains to the Forth Bridge, Fife, Dundee and Aberdeen, and the nearer line leading to Glasgow, Falkirk and Stirling.

At this point, the tram travels on a reserved route originally built as a guided busway by the city council. However, it was given over to the tramway as a as a ready-built access to the west. There are fine views from here south to the Pentland Hills.

Bankhead

Work? Study? Here’s where to come! You can Makro and Screwfix, Parcel and Plumb.

Then, when your toiling and learning are done, you can clamber aboard and sit yourself down.

You can rest, for soon you’ll be home.

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

The tram stop at Bankhead serves the adjacent Sighthill industrial and learning complex. Close by are the Napier University and Edinburgh College. Napier takes its name from John Napier of Merchiston, the inventor of logarithms, a pre-digital method of calculation. It is one of four universities in the capital.

Edinburgh Park Station

Shops and megastores: DISCOUNT! CUT-PRICE SALES! You’re loaded up with bargains?

Then stay upon the rails!

Home by car or tram or train or bus? The choice is surely obvious!

Why busy-station, traffic-jam it? When you can easy-glide and tram it!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

Edinburgh Park is an interchange with Scotrail trains from Edinburgh to Bathgate, Airdrie, Glasgow, Dumbarton, Helensburgh, Stirling, Alloa and Dunblane. It is on the newly built electric Airdrie-Bathgate line, and Glasgow is within an hour’s journey from here.

To the south of the tramline at Edinburgh Park Station is Hermiston Gait retail complex, with major branches of UK shops such as Tesco and B&Q. South of the complex, about ten minutes’ walk from the tram stop, the Union Canal walk can be accessed from Cultins Rd, with quiet waterside strolls either toward the city or out toward Ratho.

Leaving Edinburgh Park Station, the tram climbs over a bridge to re-cross the main Edinburgh-Glasgow railway line, from which there are fine views south to the Pentland Hills and east to the city skyline, with the castle and Arthur’s Seat clearly visible. The tram then descends the bridge and crosses open land from which the Edinburgh city bypass is seen to the west, and then draws into the stop at:

Edinburgh Park Central

Glass hillsides line this sober business glen.

Come summer, there’ll be picnic-ceilidhs when nearby Diageo decides we should get frisky –

And turns the waterfall to whisky!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

Edinburgh Park is a business quarter whose master-plan was devised by the American architect Richard Meier. Alongside the grassed track of the tramway at this point lies Loch Ross, a man-made loch, pleasantly planted and with paths alongside. At intervals along the paths are placed sculpted busts of Scottish poets. The park hosts the site of the offices of several financial institutions and major industrial enterprises, such as drinks giant Diageo. The tram runs forward to cross South Gyle Broadway on the level and arrives at:

Gyle Centre

Let’s stop and shop awhile, No lifeless mouse-click screens. Here’s REAL!

Real shops, real people, a mall that has real style. Cash or card, and service with a smile!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

This is a modern shopping centre, given planning permission after a public inquiry in 1989, and built by Wimpey Construction, opening in 1993. The Centre houses branches of major UK retailers, and serves west Edinburgh. The Gyle was originally an area of marshland to the south and west of the village of Corstorphine, earmarked for major development as a business and retail centre in the nineties of last century.

Leaving the Gyle, the tram passes under the main A8 Edinburgh-Glasgow road; this is one of only two underpasses on the line. It now turns sharply west, to the left, to pass:

Edinburgh Gateway Station site

Just after the tram turns left after the A8 underpass, it passes to the right the site of the new Edinburgh Gateway railway station, designed for passengers to access the Fife line, with trains to Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline, Dundee and Aberdeen, This will be built as part of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Improvement Project (EGIP), due for completion around 2016.

Passing under the access road to Edinburgh Trams depot, the tram passes:

Depot

Here are housed the 27 Spanish-built trams; this is the nerve centre of the Edinburgh tram system. There is a halt here for staff use only, where trams may stop to pick up staff for their next duty. The tram gathers speed uphill and approaches:

Gogarburn

A magic wand created these glass-and-mirror palaces out of reflected cloud and sky

Like money itself, created out of nothing but human trust – without it, everything is lost,

including us.

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

The name Gogar derives from the Scots ‘cog’ or ‘gowk’, meaning ‘cuckoo’. There are several ancient standing stones and hill fort sites in the area. Just beside the tramstop is Gogar Church. Serving a medieval village, Nether Gogar, long since disappeared, the small kirk (Scots for ‘church’) still stands as a reminder of the community it once served. The church dates from the 12th century; while the present building was mostly rebuilt by J. A. Williamson between 1890-1, the 16th century south transept is still intact. The church fell out of use by 1602 and was thereafter used as a mausoleum. It is currently a cabinet-maker's workshop.

On 27 August 1650, a skirmish took place around Gogar between the forces of the English under Oliver Cromwell and the Scots General Leslie, who was camped in the area around Gogar Kirk. While the marshy ground prevented the opposing sides meeting at close quarters, both sides fired cannon upon the other inflicting some casualties.

Scottish sculptor James McGillivray (d1938), who sculpted the statue of John Knox in St Giles’ Kirk, is buried in the kirkyard. Nearby is the grave of Thomas Grainger, railway engineer who designed the first railway ferry across the Firth of Forth from Granton to Burntisland in 1850. A president of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, he died of injuries sustained in a railway accident in Stockton-On-Tees in 1852.

While the Edinburgh Tram earlier passed one of the original buildings of the RBS bank at St Andrew Square, here at Gogarburn it stops just within sight of its present-day world HQ on the other side of the A8. Known first as the Royal Bank of Scotland, it was set up as a haven for compensation payments made to Scottish investors after the collapse of the ill-fated Darien Scheme and the Company of Scotland. Originally known as the ‘Equivalent Company’, it became in 1727 the Royal Bank of Scotland under its first chairman, Lord Ilay, as an alternative to the Bank of Scotland (the ‘Old Bank’) which was suspected of having Jacobite sympathies with the exiled Stuart dynasty. It offered the world’s first overdraft to a borrower, William Hogg, in Edinburgh’s High Street, in the sum of £1,000 (over £100,000 in today’s terms.)

Recently encountering troubled times, the bank was bailed out by the British taxpayer in 2008, and is working to recover from its troubles.

The present building, designed by Michael Laird Architects and opened in 2005 was built on the site of the demolished Gogarburn Mental Hospital, set up in 1924 as one of the first in Scotland to house adults with learning disabilities, releasing them from the often inappropriate asylums where they had been placed before.

As the tram leaves the stop, the modern RBS bridge over the main A8 Edinburgh-Glasgow road can be clearly seen, carrying the familiar blue RBS logo, giving access to the RBS world HQ building.

As the tram crosses the Gogar Burn, an old stone bridge is visible immediately to the north of the new tramway bridge over the water, carrying the road to Castle Gogar, a 1625 mansion house hidden away in the trees, which replaced an earlier fourteenth century building.

The tram then heads across fields and open land; from here to the north can usually be glimpsed the grey tops of the high pillars of the Forth Road Bridge, crossing the river at one of its narrower points at Queensferry. Beyond lies Fife, and to the west, Clackmannanshire, with its beautiful Ochil Hills forming the horizon.

The tram slows on approach to:

Ingliston Park and Ride

Park it, lock it, leave it. No traffic mess, no stress – believe it!

Be a rush-hour loafer, the tram will be your chauffeur!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

Ingliston was the Edinburgh motor racing venue from 1965 to 1992, with its circuit running through the site of the Royal Highland Showground and with corners known as Foresters, Bankers, Farmers and Brewers after the buildings and display areas nearby. Although the racetrack is no more, Ingliston is still the site of the Royal Highland Show each June, which also houses other commercial exhibitions, fairs and events. The showground is accessible from the tramstop at Ingliston, about half a mile’s walk, fifteen minutes along the Glasgow Road and Ingliston Road.

The free parking provided at Ingliston by City of Edinburgh Council enables visitors to the city to leave their car and enjoy being chauffeured into the centre by the new transport link, as well as having the option of bus links to other points in the area. The stop is the boundary of the ‘city fare zone’ which permits travel on ordinary city fares and day tickets. Beyond this stop, a premium fare is payable to the airport.

Leaving the Ingliston stop, before crossing the car parks access road on the level, the tram heads north alongside the small river called the Gogar Burn , (‘Burn’ is Scots Gaelic for a stream); rising in the distant Pentland Hills to the south, it flows north into the River Almond just beyond the Airport.

Edinburgh Airport

One journey only, with a lifetime’s greetings and farewells along the way.

If you’ve just landed here on Earth, then welcome! If you’re about to leave us-

safe return!

Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar

This is the busiest airport in Scotland, seeing just under ten million passengers passing through its growing terminal in 2013; in UK terms, it is the fifth busiest airport. It lies just under 6 miles (about 9 kilometres) west of the city centre on level land south of the River Forth. Its location makes it also highly accessible for the main motorways of central Scotland, the M8 and the M9.

Opened in 1915, originally as Turnhouse Aerodrome, it began life as the northernmost base of the Royal Flying Corps, which saw active service during World War I. When this became the Royal Air Force in 1918, the airbase, with its grass airstrip, was renamed RAF Turnhouse, property of the Ministry of Defence. In 1925 Turnhouse became home to 603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron.

The airport’s ownership transferred to the British Airports Authority in 1971, who built a new runway and terminal to the south of the old airbase. Today’s terminal building was designed by Sir Robert Matthew and opened in 1977. The airport continues to see significant upgrading work, with new car park and airside shopping facilities ongoing.

The terminus of Edinburgh Trams lies at the south-east end of the terminal, with two platforms.

If this is also your place of your departure from Edinburgh and Scotland – haste ye back!

Poems by Ron Butlin, Edinburgh Makar.

Tramline Guide by Colin Symes, Edinburgh 2014.