The station was originally owned by the Highland Railway and was known as Keith Junction, the line from the west having opened by the Inverness and Aberdeen Junction Railway in 1858 and becoming part of the Highland Railway in 1865. It was the point where the line from made an end-on junction with the Great North of Scotland Railway from Aberdeen to enable exchange of goods and passengers. As built, it was located in the vee of the routes to Inverness and to and had four platforms - one through one for each route, plus two east facing bays for GNSR services. It was taken over by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway at the 1923 Grouping and then became part of the Scottish Region of British Railways upon nationalisation in 1948. Today only a single platform remains in full-time use, though the Dufftown branch platform is available if required for turning back trains from the Aberdeen direction. The bays have been filled in, having been abandoned and tracks lifted in the early 1970s after the closure of the Moray Coast Line. A signal box remains at the eastern end to control a passing loop on the single trackmain line beyond the station, the now little-used goods yard and the stub of the Dufftown branch. Keith's other station, Keith Town, was on the Great North of Scotland Railway branch line to Dufftown and subsequently extended to via - this was much nearer the centre of Keith than the Junction station. The Dufftown and Craigellachie line was closed to passengers by British Railways in May 1968 as a result of the Beeching Axe, though freight traffic and latterly Northern Belleexcursion trains to the distillery at Dufftown kept the route to there open until 1991. The line has since been preserved as the Keith and Dufftown Railway, but the link between it and the national network was severed by Railtrack in 1998 - two 60-foot track panels having been removed as a condition of the transfer of the branch to the K&DR. The preservation society hopes to reinstate the connection and the still-extant but disused section beyond to Keith Town at some point in the future and run through trains from here to Dufftown, which would see platform 1 return to regular use. Discussions with regard to this were held between the K&DRA, the local MSP Richard Lochhead and Transport Scotland in the autumn of 2015.
Future Plans
In addition to the potential reinstatement of the Dufftown branch, Transport Scotland have published proposals to improve the facilities here. This could see the existing passing loop extended through the station and a second platform built north of the current one. Other upgrades planned for the station include a bus interchange, taxi drop-off point and car park extension.
Services
Mondays to Saturdays trains run approximately every two hours in each direction, westbound to Inverness and eastbound to and. There is a single early morning through service to and Edinburgh Waverley eastbound, returning in the evening. Five trains each way run on Sundays - one of the Aberdeen-bound trains continues to.
