A world's first in 1850s Edinburgh. 

Despite the shops, there's still enough room. It would be cool to add it to the cycle network, with a bike park at the station end.

Scotland Street Tunnel housed the LNER Scottish Divisional wartime HQ during WWII, although this was only in an emergency, and the LNER had taken over the old NBR HQ on Waterloo Place. It was never an official air raid shelter, but G.F. Fiennes, a clerk in Waverley at the time, relates in his autobiography, "I Tried to Run a Railway", that when air raid sirens went off in Edinburgh one day, women and children being evacuated were quickly herded into Scotland Street Tunnel for safety.

Cool. I remember it being easier to get into when I first moved here, but I never got round to it.

Cool story. I'm interested to hear more about the hotel tunnels because a late friend mentioned their existence (but also a lift, which couldn't have gone where he claimed unless it was a Great Glass Elevator). He did manage to get into the Scotland Street Tunnel though, and took photos of wartime stuff - not a shelter, but some kind of control centre apparently. Alas, by the time I was working on this video, the brain tumour was busy taking away his memories including his memory of having taken all the photos he'd showed me 😞

@@FeoragForsyth I worked there part time in the late 70s then again in the mid 80s. The hotel extends almost as far below Princes Street as it rises above it. Myriad rooms, corridors, tunnels. It was a rabbit warren. Whether it’s still like that I don’t know. It was built as a railway hotel and was still under BR’s ownership during the times I worked there. Many of the underground rooms I saw were filled with discarded hotel furniture and fixtures. There were two huge whisky blending vats, big boilers that fed steam out into the steam locomotives. Then there were doors that led through into tunnels and supporting arches beyond the hotel boundaries. Heaven knows why. The architect was W. Hamilton Beattie who died before the hotel was completed. He also designed the Royal British Hotel and the Jenners building.

@@FeoragForsyth on reading your reply again and engaging my brain I realise that the lift to which your friend referred was most likely the one in the Waverley station that took train passengers up to the hotel (and vice versa). When you exited the booking hall and turned right there were doors immediately to your right which took you into a small lobby. Inside was a lift which went up just one level. You came out, turned right and trundled over the railway lines, down a series of corridors then took another lift which came up in the hotel foyer. It’s long gone. I suppose not many hotel guests arrive by train and those that do are expected to give themselves a heart attack going up the Waverley steps. Someone told me there’s now an escalator. I don’t live in Edinburgh now, it’s too much of a all year round tourist town, with no real shops.

@@markshrimpton3138 - that'll be the one. There are now escalators, and plenty of lifts, though the escalators have a habit of not working.

@@markshrimpton3138same at royal terrace hotel you cld go from there underground to the old parliament building just up the road as you say there was also bricked up tunnel ways ,

The gate was left unlocked a few years back and a couple of friends went in and took lots of photos. Alas, the one with the camera is no longer with us, but I enjoyed his accounts of the adventure. I was out of town at the time, otherwise I'd have been there too.

Street Rambler - thanks. The maps site is an absolute treasure, isn’t it?

@@FeoragForsyth do you need to ask before using them as would love to use the maps from them more too

Street Rambler - No. There’s a page on the site giving the conditions for using them, which basically boils down to “put this text on your thing”. There are some complications, but not many.

@@FeoragForsyth Cheers, will check it out later as editing my mural explore of Glastonbury.

Street Rambler - Looking forward to seeing what you do.

You just know that's how it would be described on Fix My Street. And the council would get the bleme.