Unless I'm mistaken Cross Country run one train a day along it?The Edinburgh Sub was being repeatedly championed when I was at university there in the 1970s!
Circular services seem to have a bizarre fascination for transport amateurs, despite them having a string of practical downsides. The geography of the line also militates against it, it is well removed from being an actual circle, it forms more a very flattened oval where trains from the champions' principal south-side points have to make a long run out east or west and back again to get to the centre. I reckon I could (well, at least, back in those days) run faster from Newington to Waverley than the train would take.
Given that the Edinburgh has always (then and now) had one of the most frequent, dense and comprehensible bus networks anywhere, with outside Newington or Morningside stations always seeming to have a bus for Princes Street in sight, it was no wonder the former rail service died a death.
I did travel on it one weekend out to Slateford when Haymarket Junction was being rebuilt and the Shotts line was operating out of the east end of Waverley. Someone took lineside photos of the dmu passing and got the Evening News to print an accompanying story that BR were running test trains for a resumption!
It's the 2105 from Glasgow Central. Note how the journey time is longer than normal
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