IMAGINE a railway line with stations so rural you can hear only birdsong and the bleating of sheep when you stand on the platform.
Imagine a route with spectacular views over clifftops and picturesque fishing villages, with the shimmering North Sea stretching off to the distant horizon.
For 80-odd years, such experiences were a reality for passengers on the Moray Coast line of the Great North of Scotland Railway, offering a glorious coastal detour away from the Aberdeen to Inverness main line between Huntly and Elgin.
Steam trains would leave the main line at Cairnie Junction on the Aberdeenshire-Banffshire border and head north on the Banff, Portsoy and Strathisla Railway route that had opened to Banff Harbour on July 30, 1859, with a short branch to Portsoy.
Retracing the route on foot as a teenager in August 1975, seven years after the line closed completely, there were still plenty of traces of the past for the sharp-eyed to spot.
And three years later when fellow enthusiast Alan Young toured the line chronicling what remained of its stations, their remote rural locations had ensured that many of them remained remarkably untouched by vandals, though many of the wooden structures were slowly succumbing to the ravages of the weather.
Turning north towards the coast, the line ran through Knock and Glenbarry towards Cornhill and Tillynaught, surely one of the quietest and most remote junction stations in the country.
At Cornhill, the brown and white wooden station buildings on the single platform remained intact and in fair condition, on my visit being still used for storage by Aberdeen and Northern Marts. The loading bay was still in use by the same firm.
From here in the 1970s it was more or less possible to follow the trackbed all the way round the coast to Spey Bay, although the route became increasingly overgrown and difficult to traverse as the years passed and key bridges were demolished.
At Cornhill, Bridge 883 had gone, having once carried the railway over the B9022, but the next two remained, carrying the rails over field access paths for farm vehicles. At the site of an old level crossing, the red “stop, look, listen” sign remained intact.
Moving on towards lonely Tillynaught, the line passed over a small stream on Bridge 886. At 887, where a farm track crossed the rails, an old GNoSR trespass sign was still on site, dated Aberdeen 1/10/09. As the single line widened out at the approach to Tillynaught, Bridge 888 once carried the now divided lines over a farm track.
Here the disused station master’s house and another private dwelling remained, but in poor condition. The station buildings had gone, though, and the Banff branch platform was heavily overgrown.
From here the original line headed north on a short spur to Portsoy, recalling the days when the Banff branch was the original main line. The remaining bridges crossed farm tracks and small streams but to the north of 891 was the site of a signalbox, and to the north of 892 was milepost 60¼, proclaiming the distance from the old Waterloo Goods station at Aberdeen which was the original terminus for the GNoSR.
At Portsoy, the original terminus dated from 1859 and was retained as a goods station when the Moray Coast line opened a quarter of a century later.
Authorised in 1882, the line opened in 1884 from Portsoy to Tochineal and from Lossie Junction at Elgin to Garmouth. But it was another two years before the main central section from Tochineal to Garmouth opened for traffic.
The new double-track passenger station at Portsoy opened on April 1, 1884 and the main station buildings remained on one of the curving platforms when I visited in 1975, the windows and doors all boarded up.
Once the coast line opened the first station closed to passengers. There was a carriage shed too, with a notice on the loading bay still proudly proclaiming: “Engines and bogie carriages must not be run into the carriage shed.”
On the secondary platform the buildings had been demolished, but milepost 61 remained, along with a couple of Railway Executive anti-trespassing notices. Track was lifted from a short spur to Portsoy Harbour back in Spring, 1910.
From Portsoy, the next stop was Glassaugh, but although the single platform and loading bays remained, the station buildings had been demolished, along with bridges 905 and 906. Between 909 and the demolished 910 were the distinct remains of an old signalbox, with the line doubling on the approach to Tochieneal station to provide a passing loop.
Both Glassaugh and Tochieneal closed to passengers in the 1950s, so it was unsurprising to find the station buildings demolished. Both platforms and a loading bay remained at Tochieneal, though densely overgrown.
Beyond here the single line heads back to the coast and the glorious seaside resort of Cullen, the viaduct 923 striding over the rooftops of the quaint Seatown cottages on eight huge arches.
By 1975 the main station buildings on the single curving platform at Cullen had been demolished, but the platform remained, along with traces of the yard and loading bays.
Heading west, the line passes along the embankment above Cullen golf links towards Portknockie, which boasted a passing loop with staggered platforms, sidings and loading bay, but with the station buildings demolished following vandalism.
The villages along this coast enjoyed a thriving fishing industry between the 17th and the early 20th centuries, and substantial harbours were built in both Portknockie and Findochty in the 1880s as the Banffshire coastal communities turned increasingly to herring fishing.
But if both villages were shaped by their maritime connections and strong community ties, they were pretty sleepy places during our summer holiday visits every year, far enough off the beaten track for many tourists to discover their enduring appeal, despite their picturesque harbours and empty beaches.
As a child in the 1960s, an unfamiliar car negotiating those narrow streets might be a talking point, and fishing nets were still hung out at the back to dry.
The railway may have been picturesque, but it was hardly busy, and with hindsight closure was inevitable, even if someone with vision might have foreseen a day when enthusiasts would lament the loss of a line with such glorious sea views.
By the 1970s, up on the clifftop at the single-track station, the platform and loading bay remained, but the wooden station building had been levelled. However even in its overgrown state, it wasn’t hard to imagine how special it must have felt to alight from a steam train on this platform on a summer’s evening.
When bigger vessels began to move along the coast to Buckie, Findochty harbour adapted to smaller boats and later leisure craft.
Proposals to build another harbour for Portessie at Craigenroan failed to materialise but there was hot competition to capitalise on the lucrative fish trade at Buckie, where the new harbour completed in 1880 tripled landings of herring and enabled larger trawlers to operate.
In the end, Buckie and Portessie would have two railways fighting for that fish traffic, both receiving royal assent in 1882. But the Highland Railway was able to steal a march on its rival by completing its line across the Enzie braes from Keith two years before the Moray Coast line would be completed through Buckie.
The railways would meet to pass under the single-track bridge 932, just east of a joint station at Portessie, where two platforms would serve the Great North line and one platform would be used by the Highland Railway, the latter opening in 1884 as the terminus of the branch line from Keith.
Villagers turned out in force for the special round-trip excursion train to the annual Keith Show on July 31 that year, but the four mixed trains that ran each way daily on the route took 40 minutes or more to climb over the braes and the sparsely populated settlements offered minimal passenger traffic.
Completion of the GNoSR coast route would effectively doom the branch, offering shorter westbound journeys and faster, more frequent and more convenient services to Aberdeen.
The original intermediate Highland stations were at Forgie (later Aultmore), Enzie, Rathven and Buckie, with crossing loops at Forgie and Enzie, but after the inhabitants of Drybridge petitioned for a station, another opened on 1 April 1885 between Enzie and Rathven (despite the gradient being 1 in 60!).
But services on the line were shortlived. The onset of war saw the line closed in 1915 and the track lifted in 1917 to be reused at the Invergordon US naval base. Track was later restored from Keith to the distillery at Aultmore and between Portessie and Buckie in 1919, operated by the GNoSR.
The early closure ensured that by the 1970s most of the line was impassable, with station buildings and many other structures destroyed.
Back on the main coast line, the central part of the coastal route opened in 1886, though by the time of my visit in 1975 to Buckie, the station buildings were in poor repair and badly vandalised.
On the stone-built main buildings at the time there was a Caledonian Railway-coloured wooden board with the barely distinguishable lettering “British Railways – Buckie”, along with blue enamel Way Out and British Railways signs.
On the east side the line was blocked by the shipyard development, but to the west station footbridge 939 still bore the inscription Blaikie Brothers, Aberdeen, 1886 – an engineering company specialising in ironwork.
Traces of loading bays remained on the harbour side of the station, along with the wooden waiting room in familiar dark green and cream colours. The old Highland line ran parallel to the Moray Coast line out of Buckie, with bridges 935 and 934 spanning all three sets of tracks.
In the other direction, bridges 940-949 led towards the single-platform station at Buckpool, some carrying other inscriptions: the pedestrian footpath at 944 was built by James Abernethy & Co (Engineers) of Aberdeen, while the iron footbridge 948 was built at the Rose St Foundry in Inverness in 1892.
At Buckpool, the single platform and loading bay remained, but the station buildings had been demolished. An LNER anti-trespass sign at the entrance to the station from the east was a reminder of how from January 1, 1923 the Great North was swallowed up into the London and North Eastern Railway, one of the “Big Four” companies created by the Railways Act of 1921.
The company had a geographical monopoly on the eastern side of the country, while the London, Midland and Scottish Railway operated 7,000 route miles on the west. Both became part of British Railways in 1948, from which time all the old north-east lines became part of the Scottish Region.
West of Buckpool, mileposts 74 and 74¼ remained, along with two LNER anti-trespass signs at the entrance to Portgordon station.
The wooden building on the single platform at Portgordon was still there in the 1970s, though in very poor condition, along with traces of the loading bay platforms. But while the demolition of bridges along the coastal section of the route gradually made life harder for ramblers, the creation of the Moray Coast trail from the 1990s helped to revitalise sections of the old line.
Running for 44 miles from Forres to Cullen, the trail developed from the late 1990s to showcase the wilderness quality of the imposing cliffs, coastal villages and glorious views over the Moray Firth.
Spey Bay was named Fochabers-on-Spey when it opened and went through various iterations before adopting its final name in 1918.
Opened as a twin-platformed station with a goods yard to the north, it was originally flanked by a pair of signalboxes though these closed in 1912 to be replaced by a single box which remained in use until 1966.
In the 1970s the brown-and-cream main station buildings on the eastbound platform were in a sorry state, remarkably still with old LNER and GNoSR consignment notes fluttering around the dilapidated booking hall, though later it would be transformed into an impressive private dwelling.
To the west of the station was the impressive Spey Viaduct, an iron girder structure which had become a vital part of the Moray Coast trail prior to its collapse into the water in December 2025.
On the other side, the trackbed leads towards Garmouth, with its single slightly curving remaining platform, two-sided loading bay and overgrown yard.
By the time of my visit in 1980, the main station buildings had been repainted in grey/blue and were being used by a local youth club group while those at the next station, Urquhart, were restored in lime and white as offices and toilet for a campsite.
Even in 1980 signs remained of an old clock, fountain and loading bay, though the missing loop line was overgrown.
The final stop before rejoining the main line at Lossie Junction outside Elgin was Calcots, another neat wooden station with two platforms and a passing loop. It also once boasted a generous goods yard for agricultural traffic, a goods shed and two signalboxes.
Aside from these passing loops, the line was predominantly single track apart from a double track section between Buckie and Portessie. And remarkably, most of the remote stations survived intact until the final days of passenger traffic on the line in 1968.
The only early victims were Tochineal, which closed to passengers in 1951, and Glassaugh, which shut in 1953. Both closed completely in 1964 when a raft of other stations along the line shut to goods. Buckpool shut completely in 1960.
That left 15 stations open to passengers until that fateful day in May 1968 when the line shut completely. Cornhill, Portsoy, Cullen and Buckie clung onto their goods services until that date too, the faintest of reminders of the halycon days when hundreds of thousands of tons of fish were landed at north-east ports for rapid transit south to restaurants and dining tables around the country…
BANFF, PORTSOY & STRATHISLA RAILWAY
Authorised (Cairnie Junction – Banff Harbour): 27/7/1857
Renamed Banffshire Railway: 21/7/1863
Merged with the GNoSR: 12/8/1867
GNoSR, MORAY FIRTH COAST LINE
Authorised (Portsoy – Elgin): 12/7/1882
Opened:
Cairnie Junction – Portsoy: 30/7/1859*
Portsoy – Tochineal: 1/4/1884
Tochieneal – Garmouth: 5/4/1886**
Garmouth – Lossie Junction (Elgin): 12/8/1884
Grange loop: 1/5/1886***
*: Only one train ran on this date, prior to a derailment. Full services began on August 2.
**: Goods only. This section opened to passengers on 1/5/1886.
***: The loop was authorised retrospectively, on 19/7/1887.
Closed:
Grange loop (Grange – Grange North Junction): P 7/3/60
Cairnie (jn) – Elgin (Lossie Jn) via Buckie: P/G/CC: 6/5/68
Stations
KNOCK (P/G/CC 6/5/68) unstaffed from 27/2/67
GLENBARRY* (G 2/11/64 P/CC 6/5/68)
CORNHILL (P/G/CC 6/5/68)
TILLYNAUGHT (G 20/4/64 P/CC 6/5/68)
PORTSOY** (P 1/4/1884)
PORTSOY** (P/G/CC 6/5/68)
GLASSAUGH (P 21/9/53 G/CC 20/4/64)
TOCHIENEAL (P 1/10/51 G/CC 20/4/64)
CULLEN (P/G/CC 6/5/68)
PORTKNOCKIE (G 18/7/66 P/CC 6/5/68)
FINDOCHTY (G 20/4/64 P/CC 6/5/68)
PORTESSIE*** (G 20/4/64 P/CC 6/5/68)
BUCKIE (P/G/CC 6/5/68) (GNoSR station)
BUCKPOOL (P/G/CC 7/3/60) (Nether Buckie until 1/1/1887)
PORTGORDON (G 20/4/64 P/CC 6/5/68) (Originally Port Gordon)
SPEY BAY (G 20/4/64 P/CC 6/5/68) (Originall Fochabers-on- Spey,
RN Fochabers 11/1893, Fochabers & Spey Bay 1/1/16, Spey Bay 1/1/18)
GARMOUTH (G 20/4/64 P/CC 6/5/68)
URQUHART (G 20/4/64 P/CC 6/5/68)
CALCOTS (G 20/4/64 P/CC 6/5/68) (unstaffed from 2/11/59)
*: Originally a conditional halt called Barry, closed in 10/1863. RO 19/2/1872 as Glenbarry.
**: Original 1859 terminus replaced by a new station in 1884 on extension to the south. The first station was retained for goods.
***: The Highland Railway line to a separate platform at Portessie O 1/8/1884.
Station openings
Stations between Cairnie jn and Portsoy O 2/8/1859.
Portsoy (2nd station), Glassaugh and Tochieneal O 1/4/1884.
Garmouth, Urquhart and Calcots O 12/8/1884.
Stations from Cullen to Fochabers-on-Spey O 1/5/1886.
Closures
Tochieneal closed to passengers in 1951 and Glassaugh in 1953.
Buckpool closed completely in 1960 and the Grange North junction loop was closed to passengers.
Goods services were withdrawn from many stations on the line in 1964, when Glassaugh and Tochieneal closed completely.
The remaining stations closed on 6/5/68 when passenger services were withdrawn and the line was closed completely.
Sincere thanks to Alan Young for permission to reproduce his pictures from Autumn 1978 chronicling stations on the route still standing on that date.
