Edinburgh passengers baffled after 'ghost station' appears on departures board

Train passengers were left baffled after an Edinburgh line that no longer exists appeared on the list of stops.

Abbeyhill Junction was listed as one of the stops on the train between Peterborough and the capital, with one person posting the picture of the departures board in the Disused Stations Facebook group.

It took people in the comments a little while to catch on as to why the person posted the picture, but in the end they got the memo that Abbeyhill Junction no longer exists, apart from a very small section of tracks.

READ MORE: Upset Edinburgh residents discover 80 portacabins will be built in their quiet lane

The junction, back in the day, was connected to the main Abbeyhill station, with the line closing for passenger journeys in the 1960s, but reopening for a brief spell in 1986 to act as a shuttle line for people attending the Commonwealth Games at Meadowbank Stadium.

The rare and incredibly peculiar mishap has occurred in the past, however. One person in the comments believed that it could be down to the code used to work out where the trains pause.

They added that the code ABYHLJN ends up in the calling pattern and the system in place would automatically decode it as Abbeyhill Junction to display as a calling point.

In 2018, a similar incident occurred and an online rail forum asked the same question: Why is a line that has been disused for decades showing as a stop?

The answer on the form alluded to a similar point to that mentioned, that is was simply a pathing stop and it was in place to allow another train coming in the opposite direction to depart through Calton Tunnel first.

Abbeyhill station is completely overgrown after its closure in 1964. It was once part of the London and North Eastern Railway in 1923. (Kim Traynor)

The junction in question closed after the Commonwealth Games at Meadowbank and is no longer in use, not even for freight travel. In 1988, the tracks were disconnected at both ends of the line.

Although the line is now out of use, some of the tracks remain in place, although heavily overgrown. Nonetheless, a bit of history is still visible and you can stop at various points in the Abbeyhill and Meadowbank area to view part of the old track.