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The tunnel under Scotland Street, built in 1842, is three quarters of a mile long and descends a 1 in 27 gradient from Waverley Station. Here it opened into Scotland Street Station in the south-eastern corner of the haugh of the drained Canonmills Loch. The descent was controlled by two men operating powerful handbrakes in two front wagons. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his 'Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes' (1879), wrote: "The Scotland Street Station, the sight of the train shooting out of its dark maw with the two guards upon the brake, the thought of its length and the many ponderous edifices and thoroughfares above, were certainly things of paramount impressiveness to a young mind." For the return journey, 150mm steel cables were attached to the trains which were pulled up the slope by a stationary winding engine at the Waverley end.