threadinburgh.scot
Rails to Trails: the thread about how North Edinburgh got its cycle paths
On this day, 40 years ago, a councillor cut the ceremonial ribbon and opened a section of cycle path in north Edinburgh. This was a rather special bit of cycle path however as it hadn't been built by the council. It was built by direct citizen action: over the course of a single week it had been reclaimed from the trackbed of an old railway a group of volunteers. Wind the clock forward four decades and from these humble beginnings has grown a network of almost 20km (12 miles) of such paths in this part of the city. There's a good chance that you've cycled, walked, jogged or otherwise explored them. The credit for this their creation sits almost entirely with the relentless (and often thankless) hard work of a single, slightly anarchic organisation. This thread is the story of how the North Edinburgh Path Network came to be.
![Edinburgh Corporation Tramways & Motors : advert : in : The Official Guide to Edinburgh : nd [ca.1924]. Two letterpress pages - tours on left, table of tramway services on right showing service numbers, routes and colours.
An interesting list of the "char-a-banc tours" and tramway services operated by Edinburgh Corporation Tramways and seen in an undated edition of the city's Official Guide. In terms of the 'chara' tours these were, of course, the early iterations of Transport Department's popular and profitable city coach tours, As can be seen various tours left St. Andrew Square daily taking in various parts of the recently expanded city including down to the seaside and river at Cramond.
In terms of the list of tramway services this was towards the end of a period when the city's tramways had undergone massive change. Not only had the neighbouring Leith's system been amalgamated upon annexation of that Burgh in 1920 but their electric car system had also finally seen off Edinburgh's increasingly antiquated cable operated tram services. These, one of the world's largest such systems, were converted in remarkable short order; the first conversion undertaken was 20 June 1922 and by 23 June 1923 the last cable was switched off. In addition through running, as seen here, of electric trams was now possible to Musselburgh and Port Seton.
In terms of dating; the 24 Waverley/St. Andrew St to Comely Bank is here and that, replacing bus service 4 that had covered for withdrawn cable trams, came into service on 18 November 1923. Route 23, that does not appear here, from Goldenacre to Tollcross was introduced on 8 June 1924. In addition the extension of service 1 to Liberton that occurred on 28 April 1924 does appear along with extensions to services 4 (Piershill), 5 (Churchhill) and 12 to Corstorphine that date to the same period are shown. All this roughly dates the advert to May 1924. The table also shows the coloured lights that were shown for each route at night.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:yqh2atawixxlb6ncx2fh73r6/bafkreienajzpurce377b3of5hcu5sbydwmkhsuc2bnqcghoau33umu5kqe)
