Loanhead Booking Office.

To celebrate the New Year, I got up early and took my first cycle ride of the year; nothing too adventurous, you understand – just enough to get me coughing. The ulterior motive to the outing was to check the new extension to the cycle path through the village as it now provides a convenient route, with a modest descent rate, to Musselburgh where the cycle club’s best runs start. Therein lay a little problem; a fast downhill run before sunrise tends to be rather cool at this time of the year and, even the uphill return journey with the sun shining was insufficient to restore normal body temperature. I was back home, outside of a mug of Bovril and submerged in a hot bath before that happened.
 
The cycle route follows an old railway line that Dr Beeching probably dismantled in the 1960s and this building is the only one that I know is still standing on this section of the track. The station closed to passenger traffic in 1933 and to goods traffic (including coal from the local colliery in 1961. The white cottage was the station master’s house owned for some time by a model railway enthusiast - while the unadorned brick annex is what it says on the tin. From the station side, you wouldn’t know they were here.