Edinburgh – or ‘Auld Reekie’ – boasted an intricate network of suburban and freight lines until the sweeping closures of the nineteen sixties and in this programme many of these long closed lines and stations are featured. Filmed at a wide variety of locations, many steam locomotive classes are shown and the transition to diesel traction is also well documented with ‘Deltic’, Type ‘4’, Sulzer, ‘Type 2’ and ‘Clayton’ locomotives prominent.

North-west of Edinburgh is the Forth Railway Bridge and the Centennial celebrations of 1990 are featured, together with film taken thirty years earlier showing the car ferries that operated across the Forth until the opening of the Forth Road Bridge brought these services to an end in 1964. A short distance from the Forth Bridge is Winchburgh, where until its closure in 1961, an extensive electric tramway system was a fascinating feature of the local shale mining industry. A far larger industry around Edinburgh Coal was coal mining and at Newtongrange, nine miles south of the city, was Lady Victoria Colliery, now home to the Scottish Mining Museum. However, when filmed in 1965, it was still in commercial production with a fleet of steam locomotives handling output from the colliery.

No look at Scotland’s capital city would be complete without viewing Waverley Station and in addition to train movements within the station; the locomotive depots of Dalry Road, St Margaret’s and Haymarket are shown.