Riccarton Junction, in the county of

Roxburghshire Roxburghshire or the County of Roxburgh ( gd, Siorrachd Rosbroig) is a historic county and registration county in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. It borders Dumfriesshire to the west, Selkirkshire and Midlothian to the north-west, and Berw ...

in the

Scottish Borders The Scottish Borders ( sco, the Mairches, 'the Marches'; gd, Crìochan na h-Alba) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire, West Lothi ...

, 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 The Border Counties Railway was a railway line connecting in Northumberland, with on the Waverley Route in Roxburghshire. Its promoter had hopes of exploiting mineral resources in the area, and it was taken up by the North British Railway, ...

branch to

Hexham Hexham ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Northumberland, England, on the south bank of the River Tyne, formed by the confluence of the North Tyne and the South Tyne at Warden, Northumberland, Warden nearby, and ...

and the

North British Railway The North British Railway was a British railway company, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was established in 1844, with the intention of linking with English railways at Berwick. The line opened in 1846, and from the outset the company followe ...

's (NBR's) Border Union Railway (also known as the

Waverley Route The Waverley Route was a railway line that ran south from Edinburgh, through Midlothian and the Scottish Borders, to Carlisle. The line was built by the North British Railway; the stretch from Edinburgh to Hawick opened in 1849 and the remaind ...

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 British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

, which had a civil engineer's depot near the station. 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. The branch line from Riccarton Junction to and in England was closed on 15 October 1956. The

was closed on 6 January 1969. Part of it was re-opened in 2015 as the

Borders Railway The Borders Railway connects the city of Edinburgh with Galashiels and Tweedbank in the Scottish Borders. The railway follows most of the alignment of the northern part of the Waverley Route, a former double-track line in southern Scotland a ...

, but not as far south as Riccarton Junction.

Reuse (and Preservation)

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

Waverley Route Heritage Association Waverley Route Heritage Association is a heritage railway group involved with the history, heritage and preservation of the Waverley Route, based/centred on Whitrope, south of Hawick, Scotland. Current projects include the restoration of the 1 ...

has since reconstructed a section of track between

Whitrope Siding Whitrope Siding was a trailing short siding or spur off the "up" (southbound) line, an associated trailing cross-over between up and down lines, a pair of railway cottages and a signal box on the Waverley Line or Waverley Route. It was used as a g ...

and

Tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

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.

In the media

Ian Nairn Ian Douglas Nairn (24 August 1930 – 14 August 1983) was a British architectural critic who coined the word "Subtopia" to indicate drab suburbs that look identical through unimaginative town-planning. He published two strongly personalised criti ...

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. 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.

Notes

Citations

References

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External links

{{Commons category, Riccarton Junction railway station
Disused Stations: Riccarton Junction
Disused railway stations in the Scottish Borders Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1862 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1969 Former Border Union Railway stations Former North British Railway stations Beeching closures in Scotland 1862 establishments in Scotland