Horse in tunnel

T and I came upon this mural in Colinton Tunnel on a walk from Balerno to Slateford along the Water of Leith. It was a good choice of walk because of Storm Malik blowing a gale. We were walking with our backs to the wind and it's quite sheltered in the valley. There used to be a branch railway line to Balerno along the river, serving the communities and the water mills. Much of this section of the Water of Leith Walkway follows this route. The railway line was opened in 1874 and closed to passenger trains in 1943 as bus and tram services were established. It closed to freight in 1967. 

The idea of the mural was to transform a dark, dirty and scary tunnel. The project was conceived in 2016 and the design was created in December 2018. It was painted by local people, including over 600 schoolchildren. Painting began in June 2019 and was completed in December 2020, so some of it was done during the pandemic. It uses a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, From a Railway Carriage, as its inspiration. There's an extra photo which contains the text of the poem and more detail about the project.