Buckie railway station (Highland Railway)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Buckie railway station (Highland Railway)

Buckie railway station was one of two stations serving the town of Buckie in Moray, Scotland. It was on the Buckie and Portessie Branch, north of Keith, and built by the Highland Railway.

Open and close
- Opened on 1 August 1884 as Buckie.
- Closed to passengers on 9 August 1915 during World War I.
- Closed to goods traffic on 1 April 1944.

Line history in simple terms
- Work on the Keith–Portessie line began on 7 November 1882.
- The north and south parts of the line around Buckie were back in use by 1919, but the central section had no track in 1923, when the Highland Railway became part of LMS.
- After the merger, the Buckie–Aultmore track was relaid, but passenger services did not restart and the track was removed again around 1937.
- The Aultmore line became a goods spur from Keith and stayed in use until 1966. The Buckie–Portessie piece remained isolated from the LMS system until 1944.

Why it declined
The nearby GNoSR Moray coast route offered shorter, faster, more frequent trains to Aberdeen. The Highland route was less competitive, and the area between Buckie and Keith had few people to use extra trains.

Station features
The station was reached from East Cathcart Street, near Cluny Rope and Sail Works and the United Free Church. By the late 1930s it had one platform and a large station building. The station agent lived in a nearby cottage; a goods shed sat on one siding and two more sidings were in the goods yard. In 1902 there was a signal box at the Rathven end of the platform and a weighing machine in the goods yard. The station was designed by Murdoch Paterson.

Present day
By 2011 the goods shed and the station agent’s house still stood.