Carstairs railway station

Carstairs railway station serves the village of Carstairs in South Lanarkshire, Scotland and is a major junction station on the West Coast Main Line (WCML), situated close to the point at which the lines from London Euston and Edinburgh to Glasgow Central merge. Constructed originally by the Caledonian Railway, the station is managed today by ScotRail who also operate most services which serve the station; it is also served by one TransPennine Express service per day between Manchester Airport and Glasgow Central and one Caledonian Sleeper service each way per day between Glasgow Central and London Euston. All other services by TransPennine Express and services operated by Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry and London North Eastern Railway pass the station, but do not stop.

Construction work started on the site on 30 August 1845 and the station was opened by the Caledonian Railway on 15 February 1848 when the line between Glasgow and Beattock opened. The line from Edinburgh reached Carstairs and opened on 1 April 1848. By 1855 traffic had increased substantially, and the Caledonian Railway spent around £15,000 (equivalent to £1,770,000 in 2023) at Carstairs increasing capacity to allow incoming trains from Glasgow, Edinburgh and the north to be arranged for their journey south.

In 1885 a correspondent known as Trans-Clyde to the Glasgow Herald reported on the poor state of the platforms at Carstairs:

In the interest of the travelling public whose number is legion, allow me to bring to notice the most urgent and pressing necessity which exists for the directors of the Caledonian Railway taking immediate measures to put the platform at Carstairs Junction into such a condition as shall answer efficiently all the purposes of a railway platform intended for the use of travellers…If your or any of your readers have been to Carstairs Railway Station, on the opening of the doors of the railway carriage they must have seen that the stone platform on which they are required to alight for the purpose of changing carriages (the main or almost sole object of this station) is several feet below the level of the carriage which they occupy-how many feet in each case I cannot say, as it may vary but lately I took occasion to measure the distance between the platform and the floor of a carriage from which I had managed to descend, and found it to be 3 feet 4 inches at least.

From 1888 to 1895 the station was also the terminus of the Carstairs House Tramway which connected to Carstairs House.

Between 1914 and 1916 the Caledonian Railway began an extensive reconstruction of the station. The existing island platform buildings were remodelled with new windows and doors and the exterior was given a dressed stonework finish. The accommodation comprised ladies’ and gentlemen's waiting rooms, a telegraph office, a tea room and offices for the station staff. The buildings extended to 300 feet (91 m), with steel and glass platform canopies which extended beyond the length of the platform building. The platforms were raised in height and extended in length to around 1,000 feet (300 m). The constricted layout of only one set of up and down through lines was expanded with the provision of loop lines for both up and down trains to allow non-stop trains to bypass any trains stopped at the station. The improvements were prepared under the direction of W.A. Paterson, the engineer-in-chief of the company. The contract for the reconstruction was won by John Shirlaw of Carluke. The reconstruction cost £22,391 (equivalent to £1,920,000 in 2023).

The London, Midland and Scottish Railway constructed an experimental locomotive. LMS 6399 Fury. On a test run from Glasgow to Carstairs scheduled for 10 February 1930 it was approaching Carstairs station at slow speed, when one of the ultra-high-pressure tubes burst and the escaping steam ejected the coal fire through the fire-hole door, killing Lewis Schofield of the Superheater Company.

The route through the station was electrified in the 1974 electrification scheme that covered the West Coast Main Line between Weaver Junction and Glasgow Central. As part of this the station was re-signalled, with the original mechanical signal box being removed and the junction now being controlled remotely from a new power signal box at Motherwell. The critical point was the connection from Edinburgh on a minimum radius curve to provide a connection into the Down platform whilst avoiding the installation of a diamond crossing. The provision of superelevation through the Up platform for 90 mph (145 km/h) running required deep ballasting; this required the platform to be raised. The original station buildings were being retained, and continuous railings were provided to prevent passengers accidentally falling down from one level to the other. This height difference has now been removed as the original station buildings were demolished and replaced with a more modern alternative and the entire platform was levelled off. The only remnant of the original station buildings was the integral footbridge, now adapted as a stand-alone structure.