Edinburgh retro: 21 amazing photos of people at work in the early 1980s

From chimney sweep to chocolate checker and shipyard worker to mole catcher, some of the jobs that kept people busy in Edinburgh in the early 1980s just don’t exist any more.

Here is a selection of fascinating photos chosen from the Evening News archive, showing people at work in factories, shops, foundry, fields, offices and elsewhere in the early 1980s.

Scroll through the pictures and get a feel for what working life in and around the Capital was like four decades ago.

13. Station controller

Jack Paterson, the man at the controls of Slateford railway station, one of the last small, old-fashioned stations in Edinburgh, April 1981. | TSPL Photo: Joe Steele