I was brought up in Loanhead so it is always nice to take a run around routes that I used to run when I first started running. Although the railway is no longer a functioning railway but instead has been turned into a path which takes you around the outskirts of Loanhead.
When I was at school in Loanhead there was the occasional train carrying coal would trundle past but the line closed in the late 80's and is now part of the railway path which goes all the way to Shawfair from
The Edinburgh, Loanhead and Roslin Railway was a railway line south of Edinburgh, Scotland, built primarily to serve mineral workings, although passenger trains were operated. It is also known as the Glencorse Branch of the North British Railway. It opened from a junction at Millerhill on the Waverley route, to Roslin in 1874 and was extended to a location near Penicuik to serve Glencorse Barracks and a colliery in 1877 and to Penicuik Gas Works in 1878.
Bus services substantially eroded the passenger carryings on the line, and passenger trains ceased in 1933. There was some revival in colliery activity after World War II but most of the traffic had ceased in 1969 and the line finally closed completely in 1989.
My run began at the car park which is in Station Road, down where the original station platform was. This was also where the gates to my Primary school were (long gone with houses on the site now).
First of all Kobi and I went to look at the bronze statues that depict different aspects of the Bilston Glen pit. There is a pit pony with miner and child and there is the Coghorn which used to have a small black cat on it (but this was stolen by vandals). The Coghorn is a memorial to remember all the miners killed in the pit over the years.
