Huntly railway station


Huntly railway station is a railway station serving the town of Huntly in Scotland. The station is managed by Abellio ScotRail and is on the Aberdeen to Inverness Line.
The original station building, which had an overall roof and was described in 1898 as, "a decent structure of the old fashioned 'roofed-over' type", was demolished and replaced in 1999 with a smaller ticket office and waiting room.
A small goods yard is located adjacent to the station and operated by EWS/DB Schenker. Traffic to the yard appears infrequent. A goods shed remains standing within the yard.

History

The station was opened by the Great North of Scotland Railway on 20 September 1854, with the commissioning of the line from the original Waterloo terminus in Aberdeen. A goods service had started a week earlier. The initial passenger service took 2 hours, with 3 trains a day, calling at all stations. Only mail trains ran on Sundays. The route onwards to followed on 11 October 1856, with the through link to the new joint station at completed in November 1867 to connect the GNSR to the Aberdeen Railway. The track was doubled in 1896, when a non-stop train from Aberdeen was speeded up to a 45-minute schedule for the, though it ceased when the overnight London express was slowed later that year.
The station passed into the hands of the LNER at the 1923 Grouping and the Scottish Region of British Railways in January 1948. It has retained its signal box, which has been refurbished and controls the passing loop and level crossing here.

Facilities

As noted, the station's ticket office is manned six days per week from early morning until early afternoon. A self-service ticket machine is provided for use outside of these times and for collecting advance purchase tickets. A pay phone and post box are available, along with shelters on each platform and toilets in the booking hall. Train running information is offered via customer help points, CIS displays, automatic announcements and timetable posters. Step-free access is available to both platforms via ramps, though the footbridge linking them has steps.

Services

There is a basic two-hourly frequency in each directions, to via northbound and southbound. The first departure to Aberdeen each weekday and Saturday continues south to Edinburgh Waverley and there is a return working in the evening. On Sundays there are five trains each way, with a southbound through working to.