The City Union Railway Bridge

A bit of Glasgow history for you - long, long ago in a time before Dr Beeching, there were 4 major Glasgow railway stations. These were Central Station, St Enoch Station, Buchanan Street Station and Queen Street Station. Each had its own specific routes, the first two stations handling southbound traffic and the latter two northbound, and although the idea of reducing the number of stations to two had been mooted by Glasgow Corporation engineer Robert Bruce in the immediate post war period, nothing had been done. His ideas were ambitious - knock all four down and rebuild bigger better stations on the areas covered at the time by Glasgow Central and Buchanan Street stations. Perhaps the practicalities of this proposal were what meant it never went beyond paper.

The station was opened in 1876, and the City Union Railway Bridge was opened in 1899 as the existing bridge had only two lines, and more capacity was required. and the new one (see photo) was built below the existing bridge so as not to hold up traffic while they were building. The upper tier is no longer there, I'm afraid I've not been able to find out when it vanished - in a puff of smoke or otherwise!

Sad story: St Enoch was the scene of a tragic rail disaster in 1903, when 16 people died and 64 were injured when a train failed to stop at the buffers.

Happy story: St Enoch station was particularly close to my family's hearts, as it was from there that the trains to the various towns from which you could sail to Arran left.

Sadly, as you can see, along came Dr Beeching, and St Enoch station and Buchanan Street station were closed, with the former being closed in 1966 and demolished in 1977. The site is now a shopping centre (how very Glasgow!) and the latter closed in 1966, demolished in bits but all gone by 1971, and the land it was on is now largely occupied by Glasgow Caledonian University after some Glasgow style complete re-engineering of the landscape. [In another example, most cities, for example, built motorway bypasses, but no, Glasgow's not most cities, so we build our motorways right through town - even today! I rather like the big dreams of Glasgow's social engineers, even if in many cases they caused nothing but problems, I admire the way they weren't afraid to be different.] Beeching also closed the Glasgow Central Low Level lines in 1966, but the city came to its senses and reopened these in 1977. These lines run underneath the city centre, and for folk who don't know Glasgow, Low Level is not the same as Underground (though technically and geographically it is) we have both! After 5 years living in Russia I find the Glasgow underground amusing more than anything else - the Clockwork Orange. Make sure you're not too tall - very uncomfortable at rush hour! More and more of Beeching's closures are being reopened these days, and not just in Scotland.

But I digress, since 1966, this railway bridge has been disused, and is now a beautiful green space in the city, I really wish they'd take a leaf out of a few other cities and open it up as a footpath!

Wow, I am verbose tonight - apologies!