Elginrailway station is a railway station serving the town of Elgin, Moray in Scotland. The station is managed by Abellio ScotRail and is on the Aberdeen to Inverness Line. The station has two platforms linked by a footbridge, and a booking office/waiting room with a vending machine. One of the route's passing loops is located here, under the control of Inverness Signalling Centre. Elgin West signal box was the most northerly manual box on the UK railway network, until it closed along with other boxes on the line on 7 October 2017.
History
Elgin was formerly served by two stations, one owned by the Highland Railway and one by the Great North of Scotland Railway, which was first opened by the Morayshire Railway. The latter's lines to Lossiemouth and were subsequently joined by the GNSR Morayshire Coast line in 1886/7. All three of the GNSR routes were closed in the 1960s as a result of the Beeching Axe, with the Lossiemouth branch the first to go in April 1964 and the other two routes following in May 1968. Both stations were located about one mile to the south of Elgin town centre, which made them inconvenient for local journeys, e.g. to Lossiemouth, and bus services soon eliminated much of the local passenger traffic - passengers would generally only use the train service if they were connecting to long-distance trains. The stations were less than 500 metres apart and linked by a footpath. The present station, formerly the West station, opened on 25 March 1858 was retained and was rebuilt in a modern style by British Rail in 1990. The GNSR station, opened on 10 August 1852, was closed with the end of services on the coast and Craigellachie lines on 6 May 1968. The GNSR station building is still used as office accommodation and stands on the site of the original Morayshire Railway station. A sizeable goods yard is still in operation on this site.
Services
The basic service at the station is two-hourly in each direction - west to Inverness and east to, though a small number of trains also start/terminate here from the Inverness direction. The first eastbound train each weekday continues through to and Edinburgh Waverley, with a balancing service in the opposite direction in the late evening. A single train per day terminates at Elgin having come fromKyle of Lochalsh on the west coast via Inverness. On Sundays, there are five trains each way to the main termini and two from Glasgow via Inverness that terminate here. Transport Scotland and Scotrail have plans to improve service levels to Forres, Nairn and Inverness from 2018.
Infrastructure improvements
As well as the aforementioned timetable improvements, Transport Scotland agreed in 2014 to fund a £170 million infrastructure upgrade project for the line. This included signalling improvements, a longer loop and platform extensions for Elgin. A 10-day engineering blockade between Keith and Inverness saw the signalling and track improvements both here and in Forres completed, with the Elgin loop extended by and new colour light signals commissioned under the control of the signalling centre at Inverness. The level crossing was also converted to remote operation by CCTV from the location. The line reopened as scheduled on 17 October 2017.
