Glasgow Queen Street railway station

History

The station was built by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, and opened on 21 February 1842. In 1865 the E&GR was absorbed into the North British Railway, in 1878 the entire station was redesigned by the civil engineer James Carswell. It became part of the LNER group in 1923.

The climb through the tunnel to Cowlairs is at 1 in 42 and until 1909 trains were hauled up on a rope operated by a stationary engine, although experiments were carried out using banking engines in 1844–48. In 1928 there was a railway accident causing 3 fatalities when a train leaving the station slipped to a standstill and rolled back into another train. Modern diesel trains have no difficulty with the climb.

The adjacent Buchanan Street station of the rival Caledonian Railway closed on 7 November 1966 as a result of the Beeching axe and its services to Stirling, Perth, Inverness, Dundee and Aberdeen transferred to Queen Street. This caused difficulties with longer trains, as Queen Street is in a confined position between George Square and the tunnel.

In the 1980s, HST were used on Cross Country and East Coast services ran by InterCity, having to use Platform 7 with the end of the train being close to the tunnel mouth.

Services

Queen Street station's platforms are on two levels, with the High Level platforms running directly north-south, and the Low Level running east-west. They are connected by staircases at either end of the Low Level platforms, and by lifts accessible from Platform 7 on the High Level.

The typical Monday to Saturday service is, 8 trains per hour to Edinburgh Waverley, 4 via Falkirk High and the other 4 via Airdrie and Bathgate,

3 trains per hour to Cumbernauld (1 an hour extends to Falkirk Grahamston and is diesel-worked)

2 trains per hour to Anniesland via Maryhill.

3 trains per hour to Stirling (1 express, 2 stopping; of the latter one extends to Alloa and the other to Dunblane)

1 train per hour to Aberdeen via Perth and Dundee.

1 train per hour to Dundee.

6 trains per day to Oban

3 trains per day to Mallaig

1 train every 3 hours to Inverness (4 per day total)

2 trains per hour to Airdrie

2 trains per hour to Balloch

2 trains per hour to Helensburgh Central

2 trains per hour to Milngavie (day time only)

1 train per day to/from London Euston (Except Saturday - West Highland Sleeper to/from Fort William)

High level

The High Level station is the larger of the two levels, and is the terminus for the Edinburgh shuttles and all routes north of the Central Belt run by Abellio ScotRail diesel multiple units. The high level railway approaches the station building through the Queen Street Tunnel, which runs beneath the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre to the Sighthill area northeast of the city centre. Platforms 1–7 occupy the High Level, Platform 1 being at the western end of the trainshed, and being considerably shorter – it is usually only used for local stopping services.

Low level

Platforms 8 and 9 comprise the Low Level station, and it is the most central stop on the North Clyde Line of the Glasgow suburban electric network. Trains run frequently between Helensburgh, Balloch and Milngavie on the Firth of Clyde, towards Airdrie, on the edge of the Greater Glasgow and onward to Edinburgh via Bathgate and Livingston. The line is electrified; the fleet operating this route are Class 318s, Class 320s and Class 334s.

Services on the West Highland Line to Oban, Fort William and Mallaig occasionally use the Low Level station when the main route into the High Level is unavailable due to engineering work. As of September 2014, the Fort William to London Euston overnight sleeper also calls here instead of Westerton, eliminating the need for those travelling between Glasgow & Fort William on the sleeper to change there (alighting only southbound/boarding only northbound), the only locomotive-hauled train to call here.

The Low Level line between High Street, Queen Street and Charing Cross was built before the Glasgow Subway, making it the oldest underground railway in the city. In May–June 2014, work was carried out to redevelop the Low Level platforms, which now have new compliant seating.

Signalling

Queen Street signal box, opened in 1881, was on a gantry spanning the tracks close to the tunnel mouth. It closed on 26 February 1967 when control of the high level station was transferred to a panel in Cowlairs signal box. That box was superseded by the new Cowlairs signalling centre on 28 December 1998. This in turn was abolished in October 2013 and the station is now under the supervision of Edinburgh IECC (which will eventually become the Edinburgh Rail Operating Centre).

The low level station had two signal boxes, 'Queen Street West' and 'Queen Street East'. Both boxes were over the tracks and closed on 8 February 1960. The low level lines came under the control of Yoker Signalling Centre (IECC) on 19 November 1989.

Proposals

Various schemes to link Queen Street to Glasgow Central station have been considered, as passengers travelling from the north of Scotland to the south and vice versa via Glasgow have to traverse the city centre either on foot or by road. A bus link connects the two stations (which also calls at the city's Buchanan bus station), use of which is free to rail passengers making a cross-Glasgow transfer on a through ticket. Neither of Glasgow's main line termini are served by the Glasgow Subway, although a moving walkway was installed between Queen Street and the immediately adjacent Buchanan Street subway station during the system's modernisation in 1980, whilst St Enoch station is a short walk from Central.

The preferred solution to the problem is Crossrail, using a disused freight line that links High Street to the Gorbals area. This initiative [1] was reviewed favourably, but progress has been stalled indefinitely as of 2009.

Minor refurbishment of the station has taken place over in recent years, which has seen the station internally repainted and paved with new flooring, and the CRT screens that displayed train timetables and passenger information were replaced with new LED information boards similar to those in Glasgow Central Station but smaller, in January 2008.

In August 2006 Network Rail revealed that it intends to redevelop Queen Street substantially, making use of the Hanover Street car park area to provide more retail space, and to upgrade the station's entrances, and to provide escalators down to the lower level platforms – at present there are only steep staircases at either end of Platforms 8/9, and lifts which have to be reached using a circuitous route via the main line platforms. More plans were unveiled in September 2011 by Network Rail, along with an announcement that the owner of the Buchanan Galleries shopping mall – Land Securities had been chosen as development partner for the station, which will see the existing 1970s hotel extension which currently fronts the George Square entrance of the station demolished and replaced by a glass atrium. The previous plans of developing the airspace rights above the North Hanover Street car park into an expanded retail and restaurant area will be carried forward – this will form part of the proposed extension to the Buchanan Galleries, which will gain direct access to the station concourse. The redevelopment, which is scheduled for completion in June 2019, will also include an extension of the high level platforms to accommodate the longer trains that will be introduced as part of the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP).

In 2009, the Scottish Government announced that the Glasgow to Edinburgh via Falkirk Line will be electrified by 2016. Overhead line electrification lines have been installed on the high level platforms of Queen Street, with Class 380 trains operating from the station from December 2016, and Class 385 trains from late 2017. As part of this work, the High Level station was closed for 20 weeks (from 20 March to 8 August 2016) to allow 1800m of track in Queen Street Tunnel (and all of the tracks and platforms in the station itself) to be replaced. Services were diverted over various routes during this period, with some trains running to/from the Low Level station and others to/from Glasgow Central station (via Cumbernauld, Coatbridge and Carmyle).