The Mound railway station was a former railway station on the

Far North Line The Far North Line is a rural railway line entirely within the Highland area of Scotland, extending from Inverness to Thurso and Wick. As the name suggests, it is the northernmost railway in the United Kingdom. The line is entirely single-trac ...

near the head of

Loch Fleet Loch Fleet ( gd, Loch Fleòid) is a sea loch on the east coast of Scotland, located between Golspie and Dornoch. It forms the estuary of the River Fleet, a small spate river that rises in the hills east of Lairg. The loch was designated a Nationa ...

in Scotland. For more than half of its life it was the junction for .

History

The

Sutherland Railway The Sutherland Railway was a railway company authorised in 1865 to build a line from Bonar Bridge station to Brora, a distance of nearly 33 miles, in the north of Scotland. This was to be continuation of a route from Inverness to Bonar Bridge tha ...

opened between and on 13 April 1868. Among the intermediate stations was one at ''The Mound'', which opened with the line. It was from , from and from . The station took its name from the nearby road embankment engineered in 1817 by

Thomas Telford Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE, (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotla ...

across the head of

, which is now on the route of the

A9 road This is a list of roads designated A9. * A009 road (Argentina), a road in the northeast of Santa Fe Province * ''A9 highway (Australia)'' may refer to : ** A9 (Sydney), a road linking Windsor and Campbelltown ** A9 highway (South Australia), a l ...

. In 1873–74 the station had one platform on the southern side of the line; on the northern side of the line there were two goods sidings. In 1895, a tree blew down near to the station, and it fell on the rear of the sorting carriage of a mail train from Inverness to . The sorter was unhurt as he was working in the front half of the carriage at the time. On 2 June 1902, the

Dornoch Light Railway The Dornoch Light Railway was a branch railway in Scotland that ran from on the Far North Line to Dornoch, the county town of Sutherland. It opened in 1902, having been heavily subsidised by the fourth Duke of Sutherland. It was worked by the Hi ...

was opened, which connected to the main line at a junction situated to the west of The Mound station. The platform for the Dornoch branch curved away from that of the main line. In 1906 the station had two platforms, one for each route; there was a passing loop on the main line, and the platform for the Dornoch branch had a run-round loop. Adjacent to the main line passing loop were two goods sidings, and there were three sidings to the west of the station, two of which were on the southern side of the line. In 1922, there were six trains per day – in the up direction, departures were at 6:17 am, 11:30 am and 5:20 pm to Inverness; departures in the down direction were at 10:31 am and 1:55 pm to and 6:38 pm to Helmsdale. Trains called at most intermediate stations, although some were request stops. There were no trains on Sundays. The Dornoch branch closed on 13 June 1960, and The Mound station closed the same day. The line remains open, and the nearest station is now Golspie.

Routes

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * *{{cite book , title=Pre-Grouping Railway Junction Diagrams 1914 , year=1982 , publisher= Ian Allan , location=London , isbn=0-7110-1256-3 , ref={{SfnRef, Railway Junction Diagrams, 1914

External links

The Mound Station on navigable O.S. map
Disused railway stations in Sutherland Former Highland Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1868 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1960