Crieff [2nd]

Location type

Station

Name and dates

Crieff [2nd] (1893-1964)

Note: text in square brackets is added for clarity and was not part of the location's name.

Opened on the Crieff and Comrie Railway.

Description

This was a through station opened with the Crieff and Comrie Railway replacing Crieff [1st], just to the south. It was a large station with two platforms and three tracks, the centre track being a goods bypass, or runround loop line. There were large station buildings, not dissimilar to the latter station building at Callander Dreadnought, which were heavily canopied on the platform side. The station was in the south of Crieff. The station was built to the design of the Caledonian Railway.

To the south was the original Crieff [1st] terminus station which this replaced. (It became part of the goods yard.)

There was a signal box at either end of the station, the west (north side of line, west end of eastbound platform) controlling the route west to Comrie and the much larger east box (south side of line east of the Duchlage Road bridge) controlling access to the goods yard, access to the locomotive sheds and the junction between the lines to Gleneagles and Perth. The west box closed in 1932 and was taken over by the east box.

The footbridge was at the west end of the station buildings. This was covered but before closure, perhaps in the late 1950s, this was opened out.

The passenger service east to Perth ended in 1951 (and, simultaneously, west of Comrie through to Balquhidder [2nd]). The Gleneagles service remained however. Goods still operated from Perth to Crieff.

At some stage the central portion of the canopy over the eastbound platform was removed with only the supporting pillars remaining. Canopies to either side remained intact.

The westbound platform was cut back at either end once railbus operations from Gleneagles became the standard in 1958.

Closure to passengers was in 1964 when the Gleneagles to Comrie service ended. The line as far as Muthill was retained for goods for a few months. With no further passenger trains Crieff station was demolished and partly burned. The box survived until 1965. The nearby goods yard at Crieff [1st] remained open until 1967.

The station site has been cleared, the western end for an ambulance depot, after which much of the platforms remained, but the site has since completely been obliterated by the Crieff Community Hospital being built over the majority of the site.

Large retaining walls, which were by the bridge at the west end of the station, remain standing behind the ambulance depot.

Local

Crieff became a Spa town in 1868 with the opening of the Crieff Hydro . The hydro is located on the northern edge of Crieff, around two thirds of a mile north of the former station. The first station, a terminus (Crieff [1st]), opened in 1856.

The Station Hotel was on the corner of Union Terrace and King Street. It lives on as the Station Bar .

Tags

Station

Aliases

Crieff

External links

Canmore site record
NLS Collection OS map of 1892-1914
NLS Collection OS map of 1944-67
NLS Map
NLS Map
NLS Map




Books


A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: The North of Scotland v. 15 (Regional railway history series)

Branch Lines of Strathearn: Tourists, Tatties and Trains

Forgotten Railways: Scotland

Scotland’s Lost Branch Lines: Where Beeching Got It Wrong

The Railways of Upper Strathearn: Crieff - Balquhidder