Riccarton Junction railway station

Riccarton Junction, in the county of Roxburghshire in the Scottish Borders, was a railway village and station. In its heyday it had 118 residents and its own school, post office and grocery store. The station was an interchange between the Border Counties Railway branch to Hexham and the North British Railway's (NBR's) Border Union Railway (also known as the Waverley Route).

Riccarton Junction
The station in 2007
General information
LocationRoxburghshire
Scotland
Coordinates55.2715°N 2.7267°W / 55.2715; -2.7267
Grid referenceNY539977
Platforms3 (later 2)
Other information
StatusDisused
History
Original companyBorder Union Railway - The Waverley Route
Pre-groupingNorth British Railway
Post-groupingLondon and North Eastern Railway
Key dates
2 July 1862Opened as Riccarton NB
1 January 1905Renamed Riccarton Junction
6 January 1969Closed

History

The settlement of Riccarton, which adjoins the station, consisted, in 1959, of around thirty houses, with at least one member of each household working for British Railways, which had a civil engineer's depot near the station.[1] Remarkably there was no road access until a forest track was built in 1963, all access until then being by rail. The isolated position of Riccarton and the need to provide for the villagers may have been one reason why the station remained open until the late 1960s, as by this time ordinary public traffic was virtually non-existent.[1] The branch line from Riccarton Junction to Kielder and Hexham in England was closed on 15 October 1956. The Waverley Route was closed on 6 January 1969. Part of it was re-opened in 2015 as the Borders Railway, but not as far south as Riccarton Junction.[2]

Preceding station   Disused railways   Following station
Shankend
Line and station closed		   North British Railway
Waverley Route
   Steele Road
Line and station closed
  North British Railway
Border Counties Railway
   Saughtree
Line and station closed

Reuse (and Preservation)

Track panels were re-laid by the now wound-up Friends of Riccarton Junction, but these were later lifted in 2011.[3]

The Waverley Route Heritage Association has since reconstructed a section of track between Whitrope Siding and Tunnel as a heritage railway; this is not connected to the site at Riccarton itself. The association, having secured a three-year lease on the two-mile section to the site, is aiming to restore this section of the former route from its base at Whitrope down the line into the Junction as the southern terminus of the preserved line.

Preceding station Heritage Railways  Proposed Heritage railways Following station
Whitrope   Border Union Railway   Terminus

In the media

Ian Nairn visited the station three years after its closing in his 1972 programme Nairn Across Britain: From Leeds into Scotland. By this date the tracks through the station had been lifted.[4]

A 30-minute TV documentary, Slow Train to Riccarton, was produced in 1986. This included both archive film and contemporary footage. Most of the buildings in Riccarton village and station had disappeared, but the schoolhouse and stationmaster's house were still extant.[5]

See also

Notes

Citations
  1. "Riccarton Junction Station". The Railway Magazine. Vol. 105, no. 694. Westminster: Tothill Press. February 1959. p. 145.
  2. "[HISTORY] Riccarton Junction". riccartonjunction.org. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  3. "Disused Stations - Riccarton Junction"Disused Stations Site Record; Retrieved 17 May 2016
  4. Ian Nairn (Summer 1972). Narin Across Britain - From Leeds into Scotland (Television production). BBC. Retrieved 18 April 2014.
  5. Eric Robson (1986). Slow Train to Riccarton (from "Coast to Coast") (Television production). BBC. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2020.

References
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