Disused Tram Works. Edinburgh

I was out with a couple of friends taking photographs today and our first objective was to get into the site of the ruined old tram works near Shrub Place in Edinburgh. Although this site is fenced off we had had a tip off about how to enter the site from the MacDonald Road end across the derelict railway line. Our information appeared to be faulty as we could not find a way in even if we had been younger and fitter. The buildings that are still standing do look to be fascinating ruins so it was doubly frustrating that we could not explore them as we wished. So we had to resort to taking pictures through the fence.

This area of Edinburgh is interesting historically as in the sixteenth and seventeenth century it was a sort of no mans land between Edinburgh and Leith and was thought to be a site of public executions. Shrubhill Tramway Workshops and Power Station, Dryden Street, power station opened 1898. A tall 8-bay, 1-storey and basement ashlar block, 3 wide single-storey bays, and a single-storey, 4-bay rubble block with round-headed windows and 8 circular windows. All these have roof-ridge ventilators. The complex is dominated by an octagonal brick chimney, with decorated top section on a square masonry base. The power station housed the haulage engines for cable-tramway operations which took over from the original horse drawn trams.

The other chimney you can see in the image belongs to a disused paper mill sited on McDonald Road.

I thought the copper-toned treatment I have used appropriate to this Victorian mode of transport and we all wait in Edinburgh with bated breath for the 21st century replacements !