Ticket to ride
From Glasgow Central to Wemyss Bay, Scotland is blessed with many wonderful train stations, writes author Simon Jenkins, who has travelled the country to find the best in Britain
Author Simon Jenkins on his favourite train stations
Scotland has the finest collection of railway stations of any part of Britain. In preparing my list of Britain’s hundred best stations, I had the agonising task of choosing Scotland’s ten best. It was near impossible. Glasgow Central is among the grandest, Perth the most eccentric, Stirling the prettiest, Edinburgh Waverley the saddest. As for the stations of the Highlands, from Gleneagles to Aviemore and Rannoch to Glenfinnan, they merit a train journey in themselves. The jewel of them all – and to me a new discovery – remains Wemyss Bay, the masterpiece of Edwardian station design anywhere in the land. To emerge in a sinking sun from its swirling roofs, and gaze across its quayside to the Isle of Bute, is to experience the full glory of the age of the train.
Scottish railways emerged, like England’s, from fierce commercial rivalry, chiefly between the North British based in Edinburgh and the Caledonian in Glasgow. The Highland lines were promoted primarily for tourism at the end of the 19th century, and were highly speculative ventures. The West Highland Line took years to build, and the engineer across Rannoch Moor, James Renton, had to pay his workmen from his own pocket to complete it. They honoured him with a statue on the platform, braving the wild moorland weather in death as he did in life.
One name dominates the story of the Scottish station, the Glasgow architect, James Miller. He began working for the Caledonian in the 1880s and, with his friend and colleague, Donald Matheson, the company’s engineer and general manager, built up an extensive Scottish practice. When he went private, his contacts were unrivalled, not least with Matheson. They were much resented by competitors.
Miller’s reputation was that of a dour, tetchy Glaswegian. Yet a third of the stations in Scotland were either by him or influenced by his affection for the Queen Anne and Swiss chalet style. Above all they are characterised by a sense of gaiety, in the case of the Highlands by a nod in the direction of their becoming the new Switzerland.
Miller and his contemporaries were designing when stations were moving from Victorian stylistic chaos into a more confident revivalism. They are jollier than English stations, more holiday in style. Their woodwork invited a rich palette of colours, notably the Caledonian’s shades of brown and cream, known as duck’sfoot, and the Highland’s dark red, or cinnamon. They gave Network Rail and its contractors a problem, as the surviving old colours clash with Scottish corporate white and blue.
In the civic rivalry of Edinburgh and Glasgow, with Edinburgh pre-eminent in so many respects, Glasgow wins by a knock-out. Edinburgh’s Waverley remains a planning disaster, slap in the centre of the city, its architecture made worse by British Rail’s 1970s removal of the art nouveau ticket office in the centre of James Bell’s booking hall. It was replaced with a travel centre, then a shop, then a Costa coffee stall and now, in desperation, a metal seat. It sums up modern Scottish architecture. One day a saint will push Waverley underground, and create a dignified tree-lined boulevard between old and new towns.
Glasgow Central on the other hand is Miller’s sensation, long custodian of the city’s soul. The sloping concourse, the great roof and the “torpedo” ticket office echo to Scottish people arriving and, too often in the past, departing not to return. Beneath Miller’s fine conservatory bridge is the Highlander’s Umbrella, where job-seekers from points north could shelter from the rain and talk Gaelic. In 2013, the station thought a few people might like to explore its undercroft and invited applicants. There was a reported stampede of 83,000 applicants. That is the appeal of stations.
The sadness that once settled over Scottish stations has been lifted by the application of the simplest solution, paint. Perth, by the London architect, Sir William Tite, remains a curious place, with its mess of footbridges and delightful signal-box in the form of a platform clock. Stirling might be a Highland hunting lodge, except that inside is a swirl of Miller’s signature curving facades and fretwork valances to the platform canopies.
Choosing between Highland stations is harder. Gleneagles was built by Miller in 1919 to serve Matheson’s new golfing resort. It declined to a scruffy halt but was rescued, bizarrely, for the 2005 G8 Summit and then for the 2014 Ryder Cup. Did anyone go by train? Rock gardens are trim, and Scots pines are smartly on parade. Even the surrounding hills appear free of Scotland’s pestilential wind turbines.
At Wemyss, the eye is led onwards to the curving roofs, bending out of sight to create a delicious sense of infinity
Gleneagles seems strangely deserted, despite its proximity to the hotel.
Further north, Aviemore is the classic Highland station, especially since the revival of the Cairngorms ski resort. It could pass for the set of a Hollywood winter sports musical. Spreading roofs ensure that not a flake of snow descends on alighting passengers. Cottagey façades and bright colours hint at Zermatt or Val d’isère. Wide platforms leave uncluttered space for skis and luggage. In the distance hover the snowy uplands of the mountains.
My favourite stations are the isolated ones, Rannoch, Corrour (of Trainspotting fame) and Glenfinnan with its Hogwarts viaduct. Despite its prettification, I still find Rannoch the most evocative, the kind of station where you expect Macbeth to come stalking over the bog, seeking a day return ticket to consult the witches.
But the station I could return to time and again is Wemyss Bay. The resort was at the up-market holiday end of the line from Glasgow, but its importance lay in its position opposite the Isle of Bute, harbour for the Rothesay ferries. Here Miller’s challenge was to shift hundreds of passengers from train to ferry in just five minutes. The crowds passed on foot from scimitar curved platforms down a covered way to the pier. Miller’s building apparently met this specification, yet it was engineering encased in art.
The style is impossible to classify, variously called domestic revival, Queen Anne, arts-and-crafts and ‘chalet’. To me, it has a touch of Los Angeles movie set. Rising from a red sandstone base, the walls are of cream render with stone dressings. The red-tiled roof is punctuated with gables of different sizes, sunny, warm and welcoming, its entrance rich with art nouveau ironwork.
Inside, Miller united concourse and platforms in a visual whole, on a plan that appears to spin like a Catherine wheel, with a semi-circular ticket office at its hub. It might be the chapter house of Wells cathedral. The eye is led onwards to the curving roofs, bending out of sight to create a delicious sense of infinity. The way down to the pier is lined with pilasters and panelled windows. At its foot, the gabled ends are crowned with two miniature pagodas.
Round the concourse are arranged offices and shops, all fronted by wide Georgian windows, behind which we expect to see genteel Glaswegian ladies taking tea. On the concourse is a charming statue of a boy with a boat, a memorial to the thousands for whom this station heralded a brief respite from city life. What a wonderful sendoff for a holiday. n
My favourite Scottish stations
Glasgow Central, Wemyss Bay, Stirling, Perth, Aviemore, Gleneagles, Pitlochry, Glenfinnan, Rannoch. Other fine stations include Aberdeen, Dunrobin, Edinburgh Haymarket, Inverness, and Paisley.