Keith railway station

Keith railway station is a railway station serving the town of Keith, Moray, Scotland. The station is managed by Abellio ScotRail and is on the Aberdeen to Inverness Line. It is situated ³⁄₄ mile (1.2 km) east of the town centre and is staffed on a part-time basis.

Keith Scottish Gaelic: Baile Chè[1]
Location	Keith, Moray Scotland
Coordinates	57.5514°N 2.9542°W
Grid reference	NJ430516
Managed by	Abellio ScotRail
Platforms	1
Other information
Station code	KEH
Key dates
10 October 1856	Opened
Passengers
2015/16	98,666
2016/17	91,992
2017/18	89,948
2018/19	81,112
2019/20	68,102
Notes
Passenger statistics from the Office of Rail and Road

History

The station was originally owned by the Highland Railway and was known as Keith Junction, the line from the west having opened by the Inverness and Aberdeen Junction Railway in 1858 and becoming part of the Highland Railway in 1865.[2] It was the point where the line from Inverness made an end-on junction with the Great North of Scotland Railway from Aberdeen (which opened in 1856)[3] to enable exchange of goods and passengers. As built, it was located in the vee of the routes to Inverness and to Dufftown (which diverges to the southwest here) and had four platforms - one through one for each route, plus two east facing bays for GNSR services.[4] It was taken over by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway at the 1923 Grouping and then became part of the Scottish Region of British Railways upon nationalisation in 1948.

Today only a single platform remains in full-time use, though the Dufftown branch platform (numbered 1) is available if required for turning back trains from the Aberdeen direction (though no trains are scheduled to do so in the current timetable).[5] The bays have been filled in, having been abandoned and tracks lifted in the early 1970s after the closure of the Moray Coast Line (for which the station was a terminus). A signal box (which retains the name Keith Junction) remains at the eastern end to control a passing loop on the single track main line beyond the station, the now little-used goods yard (formerly used by trains accessing the nearby Chivas Regal whisky plant) and the stub of the Dufftown branch.

Keith's other station, Keith Town, was on the Great North of Scotland Railway branch line to Dufftown (first opened in 1862) and subsequently extended to Boat of Garten via Craigellachie - this was much nearer the centre of Keith than the Junction station.

The Dufftown and Craigellachie line was closed to passengers by British Railways in May 1968 as a result of the Beeching Axe, though freight traffic and latterly Northern Belle excursion trains to the distillery at Dufftown kept the route to there open until 1991.[6] The line has since been preserved as the Keith and Dufftown Railway (reopening in 2000/01), but the link between it and the national network was severed by Railtrack in 1998 - two 60-foot track panels having been removed as a condition of the transfer of the branch to the K&DR.[7] The preservation society hopes to reinstate the connection and the still-extant but disused section beyond to Keith Town at some point in the future and run through trains from here to Dufftown, which would see platform 1 return to regular use. Discussions with regard to this were held between the K&DRA, the local MSP Richard Lochhead and Transport Scotland in the autumn of 2015.[8]

Future Plans

In addition to the potential reinstatement of the Dufftown branch, Transport Scotland have published proposals to improve the facilities here. This could see the existing passing loop extended through the station and a second platform built north of the current one.[9] Other upgrades planned for the station include a bus interchange, taxi drop-off point and car park extension.[10]

Services

Mondays to Saturdays trains run approximately every two hours in each direction, westbound to Inverness and eastbound to Inverurie and Aberdeen. There is a single early morning through service to Dundee and Edinburgh Waverley eastbound, returning in the evening. Five trains each way run on Sundays - one of the Aberdeen-bound trains continues to Glasgow Queen Street.

References

1. Brailsford, Martyn, ed. (December 2017) [1987]. "Gaelic/English Station Index". Railway Track Diagrams 1: Scotland & Isle of Man (6th ed.). Frome: Trackmaps. ISBN 978-0-9549866-9-8.
2. Railscot - Inverness and Aberdeen Junction Railway www.railbrit.co.uk; Retrieved 2013-12-19
3. Timeline of the Great North of Scotland RailwayThe LNER Encyclopedia; Retrieved 2013-12-19
4. GNSRA Stations GalleryGreat North of Scotland Railway Association; Retrieved 2013-12-19
5. GB National Rail Timetable May - December 2016, Table 240 (Network Rail)
6. Scot-rail.co.uk: Keith and Dufftown Railway Retrieved 2013-12-19
7. Keith & Dufftown Railway - Keith Junction Archived 20 December 2013 at the Wayback MachineKeith & Dufftown Railway; Retrieved 2013-12-19
8. "Campaign to reconnect whisky railway to main lines" Robertson, John The Press and Journal news article 9 October 2015; Retrieved 19 August 2016
9. "Transport Scotland - Appendix D - Keith Station" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 December 2013. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
10. "Keith Station in line for improvements"The Northern Scot; Retrieved 2013-12-19

External Notes

• Railscot - Keith