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The Edinburgh and Bathgate Railway was opened from a junction near Ratho to Bathgate, in 1849. The owning company immediately leased the line to the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway.
Contents
- Authorisation and opening
- Developments at Bathgate
- The North British Railway
- Passenger services
- Bangour Private Railway
- The twentieth century
- Passenger revival
- The present day
- Topography
- References
From the following year, shale oil was extracted in the area, and the line became very successful from that traffic. Other railways joined at Bathgate and the line later became part of a through route from Edinburgh to Glasgow via Airdrie.
In 1956 the passenger service was withdrawn, but it was reinstated from Edinburgh to Bathgate in 1986. In 2010 the through route to Airdrie and Glasgow was reopened and electrified, and the line continues in heavy passenger use at the present day.
Authorisation and opening
The Edinburgh and Bathgate Railway (E&BR) was authorised by Act of Parliament on 3 August 1846. The main line of 11 miles (17 km) was to run to Bathgate, then an important manufacturing town, from a junction near Ratho on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway main line. In addition there were to be branches to Midcalder, to Binny Quarries, from Barrack to Whitburn, and a loop from Whitburn to Bathgate, though in fact only one of these was built by the E&BR. The authorised capital was £250,000. Two subsequent Acts, in 1847 and 1848, authorised deviations.
The engineer for the work was Thomas Grainger.
The only branch that was built by the E&BR was to Uphall, and from there a mineral railway extension ran to the Binny Quarry, near Ecclesmachen. The main line to Bathgate was opened on 12 November 1849. The company had been encouraged by the E&GR, and the E&BR leased its line to the E&GR for 999 years from the date of opening. The lease charge was 4% of the capital cost of the line plus a proportion of receipts.
As a shell company the E&BR Company remained in existence until the grouping of the railways in 1923 (see below).
The initial stations from Bathgate Junction (near Ratho) were Broxburn, Houston, and Bathgate.
Developments at Bathgate
Bathgate was an established centre of traditional industries when the line was proposed, but the situation was revolutionised when James Young, an industrial chemist, had developed an industrial process of manufacturing paraffin from torbanite, a type of oil shale. He had obtained a patent for the process in October 1850, and the torbanite had been discovered on the Torbanehill estate, about halfway between Bathgate and Whitburn. Young joined in partnership with Edward William Binney and Edward Meldrum and the Bathgate Works started operations in February 1851. This was the first commercial oil works in the world. When the torbanite was exhausted, shale rocks were exploited, at Bathgate and elsewhere in the locality, and although they had an inferior oil content they were nonetheless commercially desirable. The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway built a branch line from the E&BR line to Blackhall, connecting Young's oil processing plant; the line opened in 1850 and diverged from the E&BR immediately east of the Bathgate station.
The Monkland Railways too wished to reach the area and they extended their line eastward from Blackstone Junction (on the former Slamannan Railway) and from Armadale, both routes reaching Bathgate in 1855, and connecting the town to Airdrie and Coatbridge, via the rope-worked Ballochney Railway section of the Monkland Railways. The rope worked sections were by-passed by the "new line" by 1859, but it was not until 1871 that a direct NBR line between Coatbridge and Glasgow was available.
Numerous mineral branches were built from the E&BR line to nearby points of extraction.
The North British Railway
The Edinburgh and Glasgow was absorbed by the North British Railway on 1 August 1865; the E&GR had itself absorbed the Monkland Railways the previous day.
In 1866 the E&BR Company was opposing NBR Bills for direct access to certain mineral sites, which would reduce NBR dependency on the E&BR. The NBR board set about a scheme to purchase the E&BR company outright, and agreed terms of 5% on capital for seven years, then rising to 5.5%, as well as accepting all of the E&BR's debenture debt. However a shareholders' meeting threw out the scheme. At the E&BR half-yearly meeting on 10 August 1866 the E&BR chairman regretted the loss of the arrangement, blaming factions within the NBR.
In 1869 the NBR built a branch to Pumpherston Oil Works and Camps brickworks (from Houston) and in 1875 to Seafield Oil Works (from West Calder Branch Junction).
In 1897 the NBR opened the chord at Bathgate allowing through running from north (Blackstone) to east (towards Edinburgh).
Passenger services
In 1895 there were seven passenger trains daily on the line, with two more on Saturdays; some of these were semi-fast, running through from Edinburgh to Glasgow.
Bangour Private Railway
In June 1904 the first patients were admitted to a mental hospital near Dechmont; it was known as Bangour Hospital or Bangour Village Hospital. The road network in the district was inadequate, and the large premises would require a considerable volume of general stores as well as coal. A private branch railway was opened to the public on 19 June 1905 from the E&BR line, authorised by the Edinburgh and District Lunacy Board Act, 30 July 1900. (The line may have been used before the official opening date in connection with construction of the hospital.) It was worked by the North British Railway, and there was an intermediate station at Dechmont, available to the general public, and many of the staff lived at Dechmont and used the railway for travel to the hospital. Bangour station was considered private, and tickets issued to and from it were marked "Bangour (Private)".
The terms of operation by the NBR required the hospital to guarantee an income of £1,500 annually to the NBR. It was estimated that the actual income was £300 a year, so that the subsidy amounted to £1,200.
The hospital was extensively used during World War I for treatment of wounded soldiers, and the road network was correspondingly improved. After the war, the necessity for the railway was diminished and it was closed on 1 August 1921, although passenger services probably ceased on 4 May 1921.
The twentieth century
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the shale oil industry was at its height, and numerous mineral lines were connected to the Bathgate line serving shale pits and oil works, where the oil was extracted from the mineral.
However the availability of cheaper liquid oil supplies from the Middle East and elsewhere reduced the demand for shale oil, and the industry declined sharply by 1918.
In 1923 the North British Railway became a constituent of the new London and North Eastern Railway following the Railways Act 1921, and the government again reorganised the railways in 1948, when the Scottish Region of the nationally owned British Railways took charge.
Bathgate remained a manufacturing base, as the former Albion Motors plant was now operated by Leyland Motors, but passenger use of the line had declined heavily and on 8 January 1956 the passenger service was withdrawn. A sporadic goods service continued, but the line was sustained by the motor vehicle manufacturing activity. Some passenger use of the line for seasonal trains continued until 1960.
Passenger revival
The road traffic congestion in Edinburgh became increasingly difficult in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, Livingston New Town had now developed considerably from a slow start, and a scheme was prepared to reopen the E&BR line as a branch from the Edinburgh and Glasgow main line to Bathgate, following the original E&BR main line. The passenger operation resumed on 24 March 1986. For the time being the line was single and not electrified, but traffic volumes were surprisingly buoyant, and the line was later doubled.
The success of the resumption of passenger traffic did not go unnoticed, and in due course a proposal was put forward to reopen the line from Bathgate to Airdrie, recreating a passenger route between Edinburgh and Glasgow via Bathgate. This was inaugurated on 12 December 2010; it was electrified. The 1986 reopening had used a terminal station on the site of the original E&BR terminus, and a new through station was built on the east-to south chord.
The present day
Except for the short section at the original Bathgate terminus, the main line is still in use, with a frequent passenger train service operated by Abellio ScotRail.