Earlier this year, the City of Edinburgh Council unveiled two re-discovered former Cable Tramway pulley wheels to great fanfare. The wheels had been put in place at the junction between Iona Street and Leith Walk within view of the modern day tramway which runs past on a regular basis to show the public a piece of tramway history. At the time the wheels had been placed there with no context but, as promised, they have now added an information panel to explain more about them.
The information panel describes more about both what they were and the so-called “Pilrig Muddle”.
“These two large cable-winding wheels were constructed between 1898 and 1900 and were discovered nearby during the construction of the Trams to Newhaven project in August 2021. Located at the junction of Leith Walk and Pilrig Street they formed part of the underground cable system for the Edinburgh and District Tramways Company’s cable-trams.
“Although Edinburgh and Leith had been connected by horse-drawn trams since the 1870s, Leigh Burgh Council decided not to join Edinburgh’s cable-tram system. Instead in 1905 Leith pioneered electric traction under the Leith Corporation Tramways.
“However the use of two different tram systems meant that passengers travelling between Leith and Edinburgh would have to change tramcars at the Leith Walk/Pilrig Street junction, the boundary between the two Burghs. Known as the ‘Pilrig Muddle’, this lasted until 1922 when the route became fully electric allowing passengers to travel without having to change.”
The information panel.
As a reminder from previous articles these are the two wheels which once were used to help power the cable tramway. (Both Photographs by blackpool_trams, 29th July 2023)
Excellent. They could have so easily been thrown in the scrap metal bin! And a nice description to go with them.