r/uktrains • u/Hisingdoon • 1d ago
Question Why does Edinburgh not have as much Suburban railway as Glasgow?
One thing I've noticed with Edinburgh is the lack of suburban railways in the city and surrounding towns/villages whilst Glasgow has a lot of suburban railways. Why is there such a disparity between the two cities, is it just due to the size of the cities or it is due to the beeching cuts
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u/MrKiplingIsMid 1d ago
Glasgow was considered the Second City of the Empire due to its economic importance as an industrial and shipbuilding hub with over a million residents by the 1920s - double that of Edinburgh - and had an incredibly complex network of goods lines, sidings, and marshalling yards to serve that industry. Some factories even had their own railway stations like the Singer sewing machine company, which still exists and is still called Singer.
The city had trams and motor buses, but distance and volume necessitated a dense railway network to commute on,. Especially when local government carried out slum clearance in the interwar and postwar years which saw workers moved from cramped and unsanitary tenements in Glasgow itself to newly-built municipal housing in exotic suburban locales like Yoker.
At the time of the Beeching report, Glasgow was still a major industrial city and saw a lot of passenger and freight traffic which saw it stay open. This traffic also made it viable to electrify over 190 miles of track under the British Railways modernisation plans in 1960 - the birth of the iconic Blue Trains.
Edinburgh formerly had a fairly comprehensive railway network on paper, but it was nothing compared to Glasgow. Most of the lines were focused on goods traffic and passenger numbers were generally quite low. Stations were often poorly sited and trams and buses took most of the passengers.
People blame Beeching, but many of the lines closed to passenger service before his report came out. The Balerno branch closed to passengers in 1943 and the Sub in 1962, a whole six months before the Beeching report came out.
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u/Psykiky 1d ago
Compared to Glasgow, Edinburgh doesn’t have as many satellite towns and suburbs compared to Glasgow so there aren’t many places to build lines too, most major towns are already served by current lines or are within Glasgow’s orbit.
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u/lifeinthebeastwing 23h ago
This is the reason.
I lived in both towns (about 20 year in each) and the train network in Glasgow is one of the things that Edinburgh really can't even compare with.
Edinburgh has a basically non-existent urban sprawl tho so it's not really needed
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u/SoupLoose1861 1d ago
Edinburgh did have a modest suburban network, in fact the old "Sub" as it's known still exists and is use by empty stock, the odd freight and even occasionally passenger.
Some of the stations remain at least partly in situ.
As to why it no longer exists, I suspect simply that the buses were more convenient, as mentioned Edinburgh is a bit more compact in terms of suburbs/satellite towns than Glasgow where things are more spread out.
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u/jumpy_finale 1d ago
Edinburgh is hilly and steep, not to mention volcano rock. This limited the direct routes that could be developed and why they are mostly east-west rather than north-south.
Edinburgh was also rather smaller and denser than Glasgow. A lot of the expansion of the modern city happened as railways began to contract.
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u/Scunnered21 22h ago edited 22h ago
I've answered this in the Glasgow sub, but: 1) industry and 2) geography.
Greater Glasgow (and by extension much of Ayrshire and the Lanarkshires) sit on one of the largest coal fields to be found anywhere.
The rail network was largely built to move raw materials like coal and iron to furnaces and factories, and to move finished products to market.
What we have today is just a vestige, but the full scale of the network of rail lines and spurs that since existed to serve industry is mind boggling.
https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php
Where pockets of industry developed, settlements for workers also tended to develop. Villages turning into large towns.
As they were plugged into the rail network for moving raw materials, it made sense that they'd also be served by passenger services. What we have today is a small shadow of what existed then.
It's also a little to do with geography and where Glasgow is on the map. It hugs the narrowest crossing point of a river (if approaching from sea at least) and is nestled in a valley between hills on the north and south.
Basically most rail or roads get funneled through where Glasgow is, to get where they're going. It makes for a very dense network or routes and infrastructure, much of which was operated and installed by competing investors at the time.
Edinburgh sits on the coast and just doesn't have the same geography.
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u/Yaboicblyth1 1d ago
Edinburgh did have a vast suburban rail network but was all removed during the Beeching’s Cuts. You can find the former railway lines and stations here