PERHAPS it should come as no surprise that so few remnants can be found of the old branch line to Macduff.
Meandering for almost 30 miles through rural Aberdeenshire towards the coast, it was dogged by financial challenges from its inception and the fishing and farming traffic its promoters dreamed of never materialised.
Indeed the branch closed to passengers in October 1951, many years before Richard Beeching’s controversial restructuring of the railways saw the mass closure of other Scottish branch lines in the 1960s.
Perched on the hillside high above the harbour the compact terminus at Macduff, once it finally opened in 1872, was never ideally located to capture the town’s fish traffic, especially since the line to Banff Harbour had opened in 1859.
Getting the last section of track completed was a challenge in itself, the original terminus at Banff & Macduff having been opened in 1860 almost a mile from the town. That station closed completely in 1872 when the extension opened, to be replaced by a passenger-only station at Banff Bridge overlooking the estuary where the River Deveron meets the sea.
The branch was born as the Banff, Macduff and Turriff Junction Railway, which was authorised in 1855 to connect Turriff to the GNoSR main line at Inveramsay, with a separate company, the Banff, Macduff and Turriff Extension Railway, building the extension through to Macduff.
The line opened to Turriff in September 1857 and on to the original Macduff station in 1860, though the final extension was not opened for another 12 years.
South of Banff Bridge there were only two stations en route to Turriff, King Edward and Plaidy, both serving rural farming communities.
At King Edward the main station buildings stood on the northern side of what was originally a single track line, but a passing loop and second platform were added in 1895.
The station had a pedestrian overbridge and a wooden shelter on the southern platform. The goods yard to the south boasted two sidings and a loading dock which remained in use for a decade after the station closed to passengers.
By contrast Plaidy was on a single-track section of line with no crossing loop or signalbox, serving a handful of local farms and with a simple shelter on the west side of the single platform.
It did have a goods yard with a couple of sidings, loading platforms and a weighing machine, but both the station and goods yard were closed by the LNER in 1944, making it the first on the line to shut.
The town of Turriff was a veritable metropolis by comparison, the largest intermediate station on the branch and the original terminus, boasting a large goods shed, cattle pens and goods yard to the south and a locomotive shed and water tower to the north, originally complete with turntable until around 1900.
With two platforms and a passing loop, Turriff had substantial station buildings standing on either side with large platform canopies, and was flanked by a pair of signal boxes.
The line opened this far in 1857, was renamed the Aberdeen & Turriff Railway in 1859 and merged with the GNoSR in 1866.
But with only three trains each way daily, receipts were disappointing and only just covered operating expenses. Although these had increased to five a day by the 1930s, when Sunday excursion trains even ran from Aberdeen, coal shortages in 1951 forced British Railways to introduce sweeping cuts to train services and the Macduff branch was an obvious target.
With its corn mill, saw mill and auction mart, Turriff remained open to goods until 1966, though all services north to Macduff stopped in 1961.
Later re-alignment of the road resulted in the demolition of the station, although a section of the platforms survives to the south, the goods yard becoming a caravan park.
Heading south, the railway climbed towards Rothienorman, partly by means of a long 1 in 80 gradient. First stop, Auchterless, 14 miles from the junction at Inveramsay and serving a largely rural area, along with the Towie Barclay estate and Kirkton of Auchterless.
The station originally had two stone-built platforms with a small wooden shelter on one side and a brick ticket office and waiting room on the northbound platform.
By the time passenger services stopped in 1951 the passing loop, second platform and footbridge had already been removed to reduce maintenance costs but the goods yard had three sidings, a shed, loading dock, crane and weighing machine and remained in use until August 1964.
Although heavily overgrown 14 years later when Alan Young pictured the remains, the red brick station buildings were later restored as a private dwelling.
A few miles further south, the layout at Fyvie was very similar. Although lying a mile from the village, it also served Fyvie Castle, where the King and Queen of Spain had stayed in 1906 as guests of Lord Leith.
Back then the station had a signalbox, two stone-built platforms with a small wooden shelter on one side and a brick ticket office and waiting room on the southbound platform. But the passing loop and second platform were closed in 1936 to save on maintenance costs and later removed.
A short siding to the north on the eastern side of the single track line was intended for use in catching any runaway wagons escaping on the 1 in 80 gradient down from Rothienorman, while the goods yard contained the usual weighing machine, goods shed, loading dock and sidings.
Rothienorman itself was the summit of the line at almost 400 feet above sea level.
But while the station was once typical of others on the line, with two platforms connected by a pedestrian overbridge, a passing loop and a small wooden shelter on the up platform, it was demolished after closure and now houses a primary school car park.
Closed to passengers in 1951 with other stations on the line, the sidings and goods yard remained in use until January 3, 1966, when the line closed to goods.
The last intermediate station on the line at Wartle was less substantial, with a single platform housing the brick station house and a goods yard with loading dock and sidings.
Good services were withdrawn in August 1964, along with those at Auchterless, but the station remains in use as a private dwelling.
Just over three miles more and the line reached Inveramsay, a modest exchange junction in a sparsely populated rural area on the main line from Aberdeen to Inverness.
The station had two platforms on the main line, one serving as an island with the main station building and one of its two platform being used for the branch, with a passing loop.
Sidings stood to the east and there was originally a turntable, engine shed and loading bay too.
The station closed to passengers in 1951 with the branch line but goods services ran until November 1964. The main line was singled in 1969, but Aberdeen-Inverness trains still run past the platforms.
Modest it might have been, but Inveramsay has an unusual legacy, as the Scottish journalist and broadcaster Kenneth Roy explained in 2001 after taking a pilgrimage to the abandoned station, reduced to a tangle of weeds and broken wood:
“Something remarkable once happened at this exposed and overlooked spot, and to understand what it was, I have to take you back 80 years to a very different world,” he wrote. “In the 1920s, you could take a slow meandering train from Inveramsay to the town of Macduff, 29 and three-quarter miles distant. . .
“If you were lucky, or unlucky, depending on your point of view, you would buy your ticket at Inveramsay from a singular young man known as the railway clerk before being waved off in the general direction of Wartle. And if you were very lucky, or very unlucky, depending on your point of view, the train would be badly delayed and the railway clerk would usher you into a roughly assembled shack known locally as Utopia.”
Utopia, he explained, comprised two spartan rooms with one half partitioned off for sleeping.
“In the other half, there were two chairs, a table, a paraffin lamp, a paraffin stove, and scores of books gathered into shelves to form an informal library or study.
“While passengers waited for trains, they became subject to inquiry; and the more important or self-important they were, the more challenging that inquiry tended to be. The local minister, poor fellow, was once asked to explain the difference between the first three Gospels on the one hand and St John’s Gospel on the other; what Luke meant by The Kingdom; and what proof he had that Matthew the publican and Matthew the evangelist were one and the same person.
“The provost of Inverurie was asked how many tons of coal Britain exported every year. A Church of Scotland missionary became involved in a long debate about India. The ideas of people like Wells and Shaw, Bertrand Russell and John Stuart Mill, were discussed, dissected and disputed. Scripture was extensively quoted and examined. All this, when all the travelling public had paid for was a cheap day return to Macduff.”
Roy would go on to create a charity which aimed to recapture the spirit of Inveramsay and those long idealistic debates of the 1920s, helping young people to stretch their minds, broaden horizons and build confidence.
He wrote: “Inveramsay, then, was a curious phenomenon; and perhaps a product of its age. It was a world in slow transition from religious certainties to political idealism; a world that had just endured the unimaginable losses of the First World War; a world in which questions had to be urgently asked, and just as urgently answered.
“All the same, we are entitled to wonder what happened to that spirit of independent inquiry, that burrowing into everything, that outburst of thought and questioning, that longing of the young people of Aberdeenshire to make sense of their experiences, that desire for something to give direction and meaning to their lives.”
Branch lines matter, Roy concluded – grassed over and abandoned, perhaps, but still alive in our imaginations offering gentle and meandering journeys of unorthodox thought and feeling.
Who would have thought that a flimsy shack on a remote platform in rural Aberdeenshire would still be remembered a century later, along with the young railway clerk and his friends who would debate there long into the night?
The spirit of Inveramsay is alive and well, it seems, for anyone bold or inquisitive enough to seek it out.
Thanks as always to Alan Young for permission to use his photographs chronicling stations along the route in August 1978.
BANFF, MACDUFF & TURRIFF JUNCTION RAILWAY
Authorised: 15/6/1855 (Inveramsay – Turriff)
Renamed Aberdeen and Turriff Railway 4/1859
Merged with the GNoSR: 1/8/1866
BANFF, MACDUFF & TURRIFF EXTENSION RAILWAY
Authorised: 27/7/1857 (Turriff-Macduff)
Merged with the GNoSR: 1/8/1866
Macduff extension authorised: 21/7/1863
Revised plans authorised: 30/7/1866
Opened:
Inveramsay-Turriff 5/9/1857
Turriff-Banff* 4/6/1860 [* Banff & Macduff station]
Extension to Macduff 1/7/1872
Closed:
Inveramsay-Macduff P 1/10/51
Turriff-Macduff G/CC 1/8/61
Inveramsay-Turriff G/CC 3/1/66
Stations
WARTLE (P 1/10/51 G/CC 10/8/64)
ROTHIENORMAN (P 1/10/51 G/CC 3/1/66) [Originally Rothie Norman RN Rothie-Norman 1/3/1870, RN Rothienorman c1956]
FYVIE (P 1/10/51 G/CC 3/1/66)
AUCHTERLESS (P 1/10/51 G/CC 10/8/64)
TURRIFF (P 1/10/51 G/CC 3/1/66)
PLAIDY (P/G/CC 22/5/44)
KING EDWARD (P 1/10/51 G/CC 1/8/61)
BANFF AND MACDUFF (P/G/CC 1/7/1872) [Closed and demolished on extension to Macduff and replaced with a new station at Banff Bridge]
BANFF BRIDGE (P/CC 1/10/51) no goods
MACDUFF (P 1/10/51 G/CC 1/8/61)
Closures
Banff and Macduff closed completely in 1872 with the extension of the line to Macduff and was replaced with a passenger-only station at Banff Bridge.
Plaidy closed completely in 1944. The remaining stations closed to passengers in 1951.
King Edward and Macduff closed completely in 1961 when the goods service from Turriff to Macduff was axed. Wartle and Auchterless closed completely in 1964 and Rothienorman, Fyvie and Turriff closed in 1966 when goods services were withdrawn from the branch.
