Trainspotting’s Glasgow: The Edinburgh Novel That Was Filmed in the Wrong City

The decision to film in Glasgow rather than Edinburgh was primarily practical. Edinburgh in the mid-1990s was not set up for film production in the way Glasgow was. Glasgow had better infrastructure, more experienced crew, and cheaper locations. The locations the production needed – a specific kind of post-industrial urban decay, social housing, the interiors of pubs and flats that looked authentically unglamorous – were available in Glasgow in ways that Edinburgh could not easily replicate.

Channel 4 and Figment Films had a budget of approximately 1.5 million pounds. That concentrated minds on practicality. Glasgow was the practical choice.

Renton’s flat was at 393 Great Western Road in the West End of Glasgow – a tenement that has since become a minor pilgrimage site for film tourists, though it looks considerably more respectable today than it did when the production used it. The exterior shots of the characters walking and running in the opening sequence were filmed on various Glasgow streets, including sections of the Gorbals.

The Crosslands pub, where much of the interior drinking and dealing takes place, was the Volcano on Benalder Street near Partick – it has since changed name and character multiple times. The Famous Cock in Leith, which features in the novel, does not appear in the film.

The notorious toilet scene – the “worst toilet in Scotland” sequence in which Renton descends through a pub toilet bowl to retrieve suppositories – was filmed in a disused shop in Glasgow’s Crossmyloof district, with a custom-built set. The toilet did not actually exist. It was constructed specifically for a scene that runs approximately ninety seconds and has been discussed and written about at greater length than most entire films.

The flat where Swanney deals heroin – the scene that opens with the baby on the ceiling – was located on Cochrane Street in the Merchant City area of Glasgow. The area around Cochrane Street has since been substantially gentrified; the specific building used for the interior sequences was in a part of the city that has been redeveloped beyond recognition.

The use of Glasgow for an Edinburgh story was noticed by people in both cities and generated some mild inter-city irritation at the time. Welsh has made his peace with it; the film brought an audience to the novel that the novel alone might not have reached. Boyle made one indisputably Edinburgh sequence: the opening shot of the camera tracking Renton running down Princes Street toward the camera, with the Castle visible behind him. It lasts about four seconds. Then they went back to Glasgow.

The film is now widely used by both cities as a cultural reference point, which is either a tribute to its quality or a demonstration that the Scottish cities’ rivalry is always somewhat affectionate underneath the performance of hostility.