Granton station was ahead of its time

Public enhancement works outside of the planned conversion of Granton Station into an enterprise hub - £850,000

Granton station was ahead of its time

While informative on the restoration of the station building at Granton Waterfront, your article upon it (News, March 5) is slightly misleading.

You refer to it as Granton Station, but this is not quite correct. The building in question is Granton Gasworks Halt - a former workers station serving the gasworks for workers.

Granton Gasworks Halt was opened in 1902 and was served by Caledonian Railway (CR), and later London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) trains out of Princes Street station, and came off the CR freight only line to Granton harbour.

While trains to Granton Gasworks Halt were meant for workers, ordinary passengers could travel on them as far as Craigleith, on the CR Leith North branch.

Granton Gasworks station building included gasworks offices, as well as baths, showers, reading rooms and even a library for workers, thereby making it way before its time in terms of respecting and caring for employees.

Entrance between the station and the gasworks was via a footbridge on the upper storey, with a doorway where the window below the central clock stands today. Workers trains serving Granton Gasworks Halt ceased in 1942.

The actual public Granton Station was opened by the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton Railway in 1846 and stood on the central pier of Granton Harbour, where the Royal Forth Yacht Club have their premises today.

That Granton Station served the world's first "roll on - roll off" train ferry (to Burntisland), and survived the opening of the Forth Bridge in 1890.

However, it eventually could not compete with trams and buses, and passenger services to and from Edinburgh Waverley ceased in 1925.

Leslie John Thomson, Moredunvale Green, Edinburgh.

Nicola’s COP26 fudge

Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that she had a good conver-sation with US climate envoy John Kerry about COP26 in Glasgow and "looks forward to working with him and others to ensure a successful event that delivers the action towards net zero that the planet needs".

In 2015 COP21 was hailed a success but the sum of the promises given put the world on track for a 3 to 4C rise in warming rather than the 1.5C deemed essential to "save the planet". Including China, 125 countries failed to present or upgrade their emission targets to the UN IPCC by the deadline of 31 December 2020, so COP26 will not be able to truthfully boast that countries have agreed emission cuts to the "net zero the planet needs".

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow

Scottish Tory hypocrisy

The hypocrisy of the Scottish Tories knows no bounds. While they froth at the mouth that the First Minister should resign over allegedly misleading the Scottish Parliament, Prime Minister Johnson was proven to have deliberately misled Westminster.

He stated that all Covid-related contracts were “on the record”, three days after the High Court ruled the government had acted unlawfully by failing to publish hundreds of such contracts, which somehow seemed to find their way to those with Tory party connections. Two weeks earlier Matt Hancock, the Health Minister, was found guilty of illegal activity by the High Court, refusing to resign or even apologise when the extent of illegal PPE contracts was revealed.

Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel was found guilty of breaching the Ministerial Code by being a bully, recently reaching a £340,000 settlement with the former Home Office Permanent Secretary.

Not a chirp from Tartan Tories on an apology, let alone a resignation. What hypocrites.

Alex Orr, Marchmont, Edinburgh.

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