Railway Station, Dock Street, Bo'Ness, Bo'Ness, Falkirk

Description

1979, work commenced at Bo'ness Heritage Area; railway to Kinneil opened 1987, to Birkhill 1989, main-line connection at Manuel 1990. Re-erected structures at Bo'ness Station imported from various sites across Scotland (see below).

FORMER HAYMARKET TRAIN SHED: John Miller, planned and built in Edinburgh between 1840 and 1842; moved and re-erected at Bo'ness, 1984. 8 bays of former 12-bay shed. Dentilled cornice. Fluted cast-iron columns with ornate capitals support elliptical arched arcade with decorative spandrels. N arcade now filled with boarding. Tie rods of roof structure secured with ornate struts, apex of each truss incorporates pendant anthemion. Shallow slate roof with smoke troughs added late 20th century.

FORMER WORMIT STATION BUILDING: 1887; moved and re-erected at Bo'ness early 1980s. Booking office, shop and toilets. Boarded timber with polychrome brick details and full-height shouldered stacks to SW, ornate canopy to NE and small cast-iron 'NBR' drinking tap with cup to NW. Slate roof and decorative bargeboarding. INTERIOR: booking office and hall in original condition.

SIGNAL BOX: (Map Ref: NT 00260 81749): 1899 Caledonian Railway (Southern Division) Type S4 signal box, relocated from Garnqueen South. Rectangular-plan, piend-roofed timber structure on red brick base. Timber mullioned multi-light glazing to 1st floor, cill shelf with metal brackets; deep eaves with boarded soffits and brackets fixed to mullion heads; 2 segmental-headed multi-pane windows to front elevation ground floor, 9-light window to 1st floor; door to ground and 1st floor at right return, reached by timber forestair. Outshot to rear; tall stack to centre, rising through eaves. Nearby large semaphore signal gantry, mostly from Coupar Angus.

FOOTBRIDGE: late 19th century, Highland Railway. Cast-iron lattice girder construction; extended to reach ground (instead of platforms) at each end. Relocated from Murthly Station on Highland Railway main line, north of Perth.

GOODS OFFICE: small, rectangular-plan, piend-roofed timber building with full-height polychrome brick stack and segmental-headed windows, from Dunfermline Upper Station. Fitted out as typical Victorian office with high chairs and gas lighting.

GOODS YARD: wooden gas lamp post from Falkirk High and hand crane from Musselburgh. Nearby wagon turntable from Leith.

WATER TANK: rectangular-plan polychrome brick structure with decorative round-headed and astragalled window at ground and dentilled cornice surmounted by cast-iron tank. Underground pipe leads to water column with individual supply for locomotives, from Grangemouth Docks.

LAMP STANDARDS: variety of late 19th and early 20th century decorative cast-iron lamp standard made by Bo'ness and Falkirk Iron Companies.

Statement of Interest

Bo'ness Station, situated beside Bo'ness Dock, is an outstanding collection of carefully preserved 19th century railway buildings forming an important group in an industrial context.

The Haymarket Train Shed is a rare and early survival as 1880s development tended to make this building type obsolete. Edinburgh's Haymarket Station (Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company) opened on the 21st February 1842. Providing shelter for both trains and passengers, the train shed was originally 2 bays (side by side). The south bay was demolished in 1895 to make way for widened lines. The remaining half remained in use until the 1980s when it was moved to Bo'ness with the help of Sir William McAlpine & Sons.

The Wormit Station Building and Ticket Office is a fine example of a typical North British Railway small wayside station building. It was built in 1887 for the opening of the second Tay Bridge and moved and rebuilt during the early 1980s by staff of the Community Programme, managed by Falkirk Council. The same programme built the new preserved railway from Bo'ness Station to meet the original branch railway alignment at the west end of Kinneil.

Signal boxes are a distinctive and now rare building type that make a significant contribution to Scotland's diverse industrial heritage. Of more than 2000 signal boxes built across Scotland by 1948, around 150 currently survive (2013) with all pre-1948 mechanical boxes still in operation on the public network due to become obsolete by 2021. The signal box at Bo'ness is a particularly rare and important example within its building type. Relocated from Garnqueen Junction at the Monkland & Kirkintilloch Railway in South Lanarkshire, including full mechanical signalling, it is one of three known examples of the Caledonian Railway 'S4 type', perhaps the most significant Scottish signal box design. Once widespread, these distinctive boxes have decorative carved brackets fixed to the head of each window mullion. Another S4 survival remains in its original location at Biggar Station in South Lanarkshire (see separate listing) while a further non-standard Caledonian box with similar detailing survives at St Fillans (see separate listing) in Perth and Kinross. The Southern Division of the Caledonian Railway also produced Type S1, S2, S3 and S5 boxes, none of which are known to survive.

The whole site was formerly occupied by railway sidings, dock installations and a timber pond. Bo'ness was the terminus of the Slamannan and Borrowstouness Railway, built to bring coal from the Slamannan coal field to the Forth. Bo'ness Station also has a newly constructed locomotive shed with windows from Corkerhill MPD in Glasgow, where they once faced the Canal Line. A variety of other 19th and 20th century items salvaged from redundant railways and railway buildings across Scotland, including the semaphore signal gantry and footbridge, contribute significantly to the interest of the site as a whole.

List description updated as part of Scottish Signal Box Review (2012-13).

External Links

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