Thread by @cocteautriplets

It's been one of those days...
Who's for a little thread on the history of Edinburgh & Leith's electric supply this evening to unwind?

Well, seeing as you all* asked for it... 🔌⚡️💡
(* = 18 of you, but never mind).

Our story begins in 1891, when Edinburgh Corporation was given the powers to provide the city with mains electricity. When I say "provide the city", I mean anyone who was willing and able to pay.

A site for the power station was needed. It had to be both central, for the most efficient distribution of electricity (no super high voltages then), easily supplied with coal and yet not somewhere that would offend the New Town as the New Street gasworks had.

Such a site was found on Dewar Place, convenient for the Caledonian Railway who had an existing coal yard nearby and they had a small gasworks on the site already. This swallowed up a vestigial street called Tobago Place, named after a long-gone older tenement.

An elegant and unobtrusive red sandstone structure was completed, in a style in keeping with the time. There was a generating hall in the centre section, workshops to the north and offices to the south at the top of the street flickr.com/photos/cagiva1…

Current began to flow on 11th April 1895 and there were eight high-speed reciprocating steam engines in all, each coupled directly to an alternator.

Although I've got some conflicting information here, those might be DC dynamos... Anyway, electricity was made, and the steam engines had a total power of 400hp, or 300kw. That's about the same as a top-of-the-range German executive urban assault vehicle.

But the station was already too small, and it was extended as soon as 1897 to allow for more capacity.

But even then, such was the demand for this new-fangled wonder stuff, the station was already too small. Penned in on all 4 sides, Dewar Place couldn't be expanded so a new station was needed.

So a site at McDonald Road was selected, conveniently adjacent to the powerhouse for the cable-hauled trams, and construction started in 1899.

The McDonald Road station was an altogether grander affair, with a steel frame being clad in a "Renaissance Basilica", completed by a rather mismatched octagonal red-brick chimney out back.

The Corporation had already been caught out twice in the rapid expansion of demand, so this building was to be big enough to meet future demand PLUS, sufficient land was reserved to double or even triple it in size.

And if you look at the remains of the generation hall today, you can see the projecting steel arches for where the next half of the building could have gone. (Picture Richard Webb, Geograph geograph.org.uk/photo/4994703)

The Corpy must thought they had been very smart here... So Paw Broon and his pals were dispatched post-haste to start laying cables along the major thoroughfares in the town to electrify the city lighting (see here where McDonald Road meets Leith Walk, pic @EdinburghWH)

@EdinburghWH Notice in that last picture that there's no electric catenary for the trams, they were hauled by cables driven from nearby at Shrubhill (also Tollcross, Stockbridge and Portobello), as Edinburgh had decided the wires and poles for Electric trams would have been vulgar

@EdinburghWH But technology was to pose a problem now. Yes, McDonald road had the room for the machinery, but the world had now settled on turbo-alternators (steam turbines) as the most reliable and efficient way to produce electricity, and with that came a problem.

@EdinburghWH Steam turbines, to be efficient, have to exhaust into a vacuum. To create that vacuum you need a condenser, a very big and effective condenser. And to have a condenser you need either a very large cooling tower or a huge supply of cooling water. And McDonald Road had neither.

@EdinburghWH So it was back to the drawing board...

@EdinburghWH The Corporation was on the hunt for a new site, and rejecting the concept of cooling towers in an urban environment, they decided to make use of the abundant waters of the Forth, which as we all ken are nippy even in the summer

@EdinburghWH Let us now consider Leith, the smaller neighbouring burgh of Edinburgh and fiercely independent. Leith rejected Edinburgh's antiquated, complex and slothful cable hauled tram system, but that left her stuck with horse traction.

@EdinburghWH So in October 1904, Leith Corporation took over the Edinburgh Street Tramways horse-drawn service within its boundaries and rapidly ripped the whole thing up, relaid it with stronger rails and electrified it as they went. Nothing but the best for Leith!

@EdinburghWH The first electric tram ran as soon as August 1905 (think about that, Leith built an entire electric tram system in under a year...) Here, the first car is tested at Bonnington Toll, accompanied by the general manager in top hat on his bike flickr.com/photos/1273405…

@EdinburghWH Electric trams of course need electricity, and Leith Corporation Electricity Works was adjacent to Victoria Baths. It was a small affair, with older DC technology and coal came in by cart, but it did the job. I'll guess it helped to heat the baths too.

@EdinburghWH So Leith is sorted and Edinburgh is on the hunt for a big new site. They soon settled on two, logically on the outskirts to keep pollution away from the city; one at Granton adjacent to the Edinburgh & Leith gasworks, another on the Kings Road at Portobello

@EdinburghWH Granton may have been attractive as land and infrastructure could have been shared with the gasworks, but it was half a mile and 100feet of elevation from the sea, and that would have required significant effort in pumping just to get to the coolant.

@EdinburghWH So Portobello was selected, right on the sea shore and just off the existing railway that gave it direct access to the plentiful Lothian coalfield which was rapidly expanding production at this time.

@EdinburghWH In 1914, consulting engineer Alexander Kennedy was instructed to draw up plans and arrange quotes for a station with two turbo-alternators totalling 5MW, and room to expand as required.

@EdinburghWH Demand for electricity was insatiable and production could hardly keep up. In the ten years from 1903-1913, the amount sold doubled; actual demand was far in excess of this.

@EdinburghWH And then... Europe went to war and the Ministry of Munitions had all work stopped so that the country could focus its industrial might on the business of death and destruction.

@EdinburghWH Unsurprisingly, production of electricity dropped in the war years, not jumping up again until 1918.

@EdinburghWH The Corporation wasted no time, and even in 1918 they were petitioning the board of trade to allow them to revive their 1914 plans. The BoT referred things to Ministry of Reconstruction, who passed it to the Coal Conservation Sub-Committee

@EdinburghWH The men in grey suits in the opaque sounding sub-committee considered the matter and gave their blessing, but only if it was undertaken on a grander scale so that East and Mid Lothian and even the upstarts of Leith too could benefit.

@EdinburghWH Kennedy dusted off the plans and came up with three 10MW sets, with expansion possibilities up to the giddy heights of 100MW (for comparison, the "small" coal power station demolished at Cockenzie recently was 1,200MW).

@EdinburghWH The Board of Trade approved in June 1919 and contracts were issued in October. The power station itself sat to the north of the road, a coal yard and railway transfer site to the south, accessed by a tunnel and conveyor under the Baileyfield Road and High Street

@EdinburghWH A railway tunnel, under the present roundabout, gave direct access into the building itself, but this was not for coal but to bring in the equipment required.

@EdinburghWH The most elaborate feature of Portobello however was the cooling system. Three 9ft diameter shafts were sunk, 60 feet deep directly under the station (itself 25 feet above the shore line). From these, 4.75ft tunnels ran 1,500 yards out to sea, well below the lowest tide levels.

@EdinburghWH Two tunnels at any one time were used for supply, the third to discharge the warm water. The average temperature at the inlet was 12C and at the outlet was 19.5C. When it was opened, there was the option that this warm water might be used to heat a public swimming pool...

@EdinburghWH The site was commissioned in 1923, by which time Edinburgh had also subsumed Leith, integrated the tram networks and switched over to Electric, requiring a turbo-alternator to have been installed at McDonald Road in the interim.

@EdinburghWH Portobello when opened was already bigger than designed, with three 12.5MW turbo-alternator sets generating three phase AC at 6,600V and 50Hz. In 1924 a further turbo-generator was installed, for 50MW in total.

@EdinburghWH McDonald Road and Dewar Place were downgraded to be the principal substations for the city, together with a third in the Cowgate. The 5MW turbo-alternator from McDonald Road was transferred to Portobello.

@EdinburghWH Dewar Place became the principal public offices of the Edinburgh Corporation Electricity Supply Dept. and that's where you went, until recent memory, to pay your bills in person. The ECES logotype can still be seen all over lamp posts, tenement wiring cabinets and access covers

@EdinburghWH And Junction Place power station? As part of Edinburgh's settlement to the aggrieved folks of Leith, it was to be converted to a steamie (a public wash house). "At a cost of £20,000 it would be the largest washhouse in Edinburgh, with 100 tubs and a separate ironing room."

@EdinburghWH Edinburgh's settlement obligations clearly bothered her, as the provost said on opening the Leith steamie; "the Council [has] now just about given Leith all that it needed and so they might give the Corporation a little breathing space to do something for other parts of the city"

@EdinburghWH The Convenor of the Plans and Works Committee went so far as to claim that Leith now had the "biggest and most up-to-date washhouse in the world!". As a gesture, Edinburgh made it free for the first 3 days.

@EdinburghWH Leith Steamie remained the largest and busiest in the city. It became an automated laundrette about 1975 and was closed in the early 1980s. (pic from @Scranlife scran.ac.uk/database/recor…)

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife At least 2 generations on both sides of my mum's family would have done their washing here...

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife So Leith had "all it needed" and the Corporation got on with the business of running and expanding Portobello. For much of its life the place was a permanent building site, as unit after unit was stuck on to increase the capacity.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Then in 1926, the Electricity (Supply) Act was passed to set up a national grid using a national standard frequency and supply voltage. As one of the biggest and newest stations, and with room to expand, Portobello was selected to be a principal station for the East of Scotland

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Conveniently too, Edinburgh had selected 230V and 50Hz as the supply standard and this matched the new national grid requirements. Portobello was quickly expanded with two new 31.5MW sets, for a total of 118MW, well in excess of the planned 100MW (Pic Graces Guide)

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife More generation required more boilers, required more chimneys required more coolant, so a 4th tunnel was sunk out to sea to bring in more seawater. The place ended up being a weird mixture of classical and modern architecture with 7, stumpy steam-punk looking chimneys out back

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife In 1936, Portobello finally got its promised open-air pool, which was mooted before the power station had even been completed. (Postcard pic and many more like it here porty.org.uk/postcards/gall…)

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Whether or not the pool was kept at the 20C promised from the hot water exhaust from the power station is a matter of much nostalgic debate. But the Corporation were restless and had much bigger plans afoot to expand the station. Step up Ebenezer James Macrae, city architect.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Ebenezer Macrae is one of those legendary figures in Edinburgh municipal architecture, he designed much of the modern city, and designed it well. Portobello was to be expanded to 149MW and a huge extension was to be added to create surplus capacity

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife And the usually conservative Macrae was going to do it in a strikingly modern red-brick and concrete style, but with its roots in Modern Athens. A main addition would be an immense 350ft chimney to try and clear the stoor away from the washing lines of Portobello.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife The original station was dwarfed by the new additions,hiding from the publics eye the mechanical parts behind a towering facade of red brick and glass.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife That chimney alone weighed in at 10,000 tons and had 710 thousand bricks in it, which could conveniently be brought directly by rail from local brickworks like Prestongrange, Roslin, Newbattle and Wallyford.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife The new structure was completed just in time for another war. I'm not sure that the big new lum was quite big enough though, and stoor still blighted the clean white washlines of the neighbourhood dependent on which way the wind blew.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife The work was never quite completed to the original plan, however, as the war got in the way of that (pic Capital Collections capitalcollections.org.uk/view-item?key=…)

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife After the war, the electricity supply was nationalised, so in 1947 Edinburgh Corporation's finest asset was transferred to the nascent South East Scotland Electricity Board. Expansion was then ago, by 1950 up to 212.5MW (over twice the original expectation)

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife More reshuffling occurred in 1955, when the SESEB and its west coast equivalent the SWSEB were merged to form the SSEB and by 1957 Portobello was producing 272.5MW and had the highest thermal efficiency of any power station in the UK

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife It wasn't all smooth going though. An explosion caused by seawater in the switchgear caused an Edinburgh-wide 2 hour blackout in 1953, and in 1961 there was a fire which fortunately was quickly contained flickr.com/photos/6169498…

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Portobello continued keeping the lights twinkling in Edinburgh and the Lothians for a further 16 years, although it was by the station along the coast at Cockenzie which opened in 1967. The end came in 1977, with a huge new station open at Longannet and nuclear schemes on the way

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife And then inevitably, Edinburgh did what Edinburgh does best and quickly trashed the place before somebody could think of something else to do with it.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife You can still visit the old gates and fences if you happen to be passing, and there's some bits that used to house switchgear left on the other side of the road

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Until a few years ago, a 1950s addition persisted too. I once spent a summer in this place doing a dreadful job, typing electrcity meter readings submitted on postcards or left as voicemails onto a computer. I wasn't so sad to see it go...

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife If you sort of squint and close your eyes you could claim that the block of retirement apartments that now has the site might have been inspired by Macrae's power station, maybe some of the less elegant bits round the back.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife And six years ago, the monumental city coat of arms turned up, broken into at least 3 pieces, in a council yard in Sighthill. The promise to incorporate it into a new sports centre for Portobello having beein quietly forgotten... flickr.com/photos/w_f_bry…

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Edinburgh's Latin motto "Nisi Dominus Frustra" is an abbreviation of Psalm 127, "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."
I'm not a believer myself, but I think there's something in that.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Edinburgh & Leith's electricity supply, 1891-1977, a thread; threadreaderapp.com/thread/1171842…

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Aha, I almost forgot I had this, just a photoof a copy of the original, the programme for the opening of the 1939 extension. "THE HUB OF GREATER EDINBURGH!" (note the artist hasn't actually got the image right and has left the old chimneys in there...)

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Well that went down rather well, did it not?
But, wait!
There's more!

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife The current was to be switched on at Dewar Place "Central Electric Station" on 11th April 1895, a grand affair, so the Corporation sent out invites to the worthies of the city to request their attendance at this grand occasion.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife "The Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council...
request the honour of your presence at
The Central Station, Dewar Place,
at 5 o'clock afternoon,
when you have the opportunity of inspecting the
works prior to the turning on of the Electric Current on that evening (About 8 o'clock.)"

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife And so it was, at 8pm the wife of Lord Provost Andrew McDonald (the internet does not contain her portrait, naturally) duly flicked the switch in a front room at the nearby Rutland Hotel.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife And lo' and behold, there was light!
A line of electric arc lamps had been installed along the north side Princes Street especially for the occasion.
The spectacle of instant light attracted thronging crowds, who came to marvel at this wonder of the age.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife With the brilliant light from incandescent carbon every 50 yards, mounted 23 feet high, Princes Street could claim to be the best lit street in Europe. But this being Edinburgh, the corporation had half of them turned off at midnight for reasons of economy

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife The line of lamps was duly completed from Haymarket to Waterloo Place, once again Paw Broon and pals did the hard work. The plan was to illuminate the principal tram routes, so the system was quickly extended to Dean Bridge, Viewforth, Fountainbridge...

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife ...down Leith Street, along the Bridges (which had seen the first gas lighting in Edinburgh not 80 years before), to Clerk Street and the Meadows, the Royal Mile and Waverley Bridge to Forrest Road via Cockburn Street.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Note that some of those routes were horse tram, and were removed only a few years later when the cable-hauled system came in.

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife A contemporary verse recorded "When o'er our hills came lines with power, it was indeed our brightest hour;
With fourteen lamps our street is bright, a pleasure now to walk by night" ⚡️🔌💡

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife The report of the Electric Lighting deparment in 1905 recorded "The municipal reputation... has been greatly increased by its management of the electric light, the success of which has been quite phenomenal"

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife It also went on... "The waste of... plant is very considerable, arising not so much from ordinary tear and wear, but through carts and other vehicles coming into collision with the lamps...
Breakages are... frequent... representing a considerable annual expenditure”

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Perhaps the lamp posts should have worn some high viz...

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Speaking of lamp posts, these were often repurposed from gas lamp standards, but Edinburgh also bought many from local ironfounders and hot-house builders Mackenzie Bros. flickr.com/photos/1390607…

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Mackenzie Bros, later Mackenzie & Moncur would go on to produce the bulk of municipal iron street furniture for Edinburgh, and it's hard to walk down a city street from before the 1970s without coming across one of their gratings or covers. flickr.com/photos/kaputni…

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Those fine old cast iron lamp posts in Leith? Mackenzie & Moncur flickr.com/photos/byzanne…

@EdinburghWH @Scranlife Don't believe me? Have a look for yourself. Check out any old street drain grating or cast iron lamp post in Edinburgh and you can almost guarantee it's Mackenzie & Moncur. flickr.com/photos/chdot/8…