THE railwaymania that engulfed the country in the 1840s meant that there was no shortage of ideas about different ways in which the Aberdeenshire market town of Alford could be added to the railway map.
One proposal would have seen the Deeside Railway extended from its Banchory terminus north through Lumphanan and Cushnie to Alford. Another would have left the Deeside line at Colford before heading up through Echt, Waterton and Tillyfourie.
Other options included leaving the GNoSR main line between Aberdeen and Huntly, and heading west. One plan involved a junction with the main line at Buchanstone, but that would mean a 700-yard tunnel through the Bryndie Hill and very severe gradients.
An easier route without a tunnel and with gentler gradients could be made by going from Kintore through Tillyfourie, and this was the line for which parliamentary sanction was sought and granted, the GNoSR line offering the prospect of greater flexibility with connecting journeys for both passengers and goods than the Deeside route.
The Alford Valley Railway was duly authorised in 1856, opened on March 21, 1859 and merged with the GNoSR in 1866.
Kintore had opened in 1854 with the main line from Kittybrewster to Huntly, but now became a three-platform station, with a bay platform on the west side at the north end for the Alford branch.
Here there was a goods yard, signalbox and turntable for the branch line locomotive and a short sawmill siding between the main line and the branch. Originally the station boasted only a passing loop, but the main line from Dyce was doubled in 1880 and on to Inveramsay in 1882.
Kintore closed to passengers in 1964 and goods in 1966, the same year that saw the Alford branch close to goods. The main line was singled in 1969, the platforms remaining disused. But the line was redoubled again to Inverurie in 2020 and a new station opened on the site of the Alford branch junction.
When the branch opened, four passenger trains ran daily in each direction, called at Kemnay, Monymusk and Whitehouse. An additional station was opened at Tillyfourie in 1860.
But with trains running through such agricultural terrain to a small town with only about 1,200 inhabitants, no one was under any illusions about the potential profitability of passenger services on the line.
Nonetheless, the granite industry around Kemnay provided good business for the railway, in the same way that other north-east lines relied on fast fish trains to London or busy cattle markets to bolster modest passenger trade.
Kemnay station itself may be nothing more than a memory, buried beneath a housing development, but its quarries were to become famous, the railway enabling stone to be transported all over the country for bridges, buildings and monuments, from the Liver Building in Liverpool to Marischal College in Aberdeen and the Thames Embankment in London.
The new station completed here in 1901 on land set aside by the local laird was quite a substantial edifice in its prime, complete with passing loop and still in good condition years after closure.
Local 28-year-old entrepreneur John Fyfe had taken a lease of the Paradise Hill quarry in 1858 while the railway was still being built and would turn it into a flourishing business that 30 years later would be employing 250 men.
Other quarries sprang up along the line too, though Paradise Hill remained the biggest and most famous, a siding there still being served by the daily freight train that ran for years after the branch closed to passengers in January 1950.
By contrast, the next station along the route was the sleepy little single-platform station at Monymusk, eight miles from the main line and buried away in a thick wood some three-quarters of a mile from the village.
Taking a trip on a freight train along the line in 1959 to celebrate the centenary of its opening, J Spencer Giles wrote of the evocative scent of gorse, heather and wood shavings emanating from the timber yard at the eastern end of the station.
From there the branch climbed through rugged moorland towards Tillyfourie and on towards the summit at the 24½ milepost from Aberdeen, passing into a deep mile-long cutting blasted through particularly hard granite before the views opened up towards Alford.
Originally a single-platform station, Tillyfourie’s passing loop and eastbound platform were added later. The brick-built station building closed to passengers in 1950 but survived after closure to become a private dwelling.
The small goods yard shut in 1952, but there were sidings serving quarries on both sides of the station, including Corrennie quarry which produced distinctive salmon-pink granite favoured for decorative use and gracing buildings such as Glasgow City Chambers.
Next stop, Whitehouse, a single-platform station with a goods yard on the north side of the line which remained open long after the station shut to passengers in 1950. Although Spencer Giles wrote in 1960 that the extensive sidings filled with empty vans looked largely disused, goods services continued until the line closed completely in 1966.
At Alford, the modest single-platform terminus was never exactly a bustling transport hub and rising operating costs coupled with a decline in local traffic after the end of the Second World War resulted in the closure of the branch to passengers on January 2, 1950.
Goods trains continued to run until November 7, 1966, when the line was completely closed, but Spencer Giles’ portrait for Railway Magazine of the daily freight train in 1960 is a flashback to a much quieter era.
By that stage the branch is single track throughout and the freight train makes just one round trip each day, a little J36 0-6-0 tank engine from Kittybrewster trundling around with a selection of wagons, cattle trusks and brake vans like a Hornby Dublo train set.
After swapping wagons at some of the quarry lines and dropping parcels at Kemnay, there’s some serious shunting to do in the yard at Alford, where it’s market day. At this stage, the signalling system is still intact and the station boasts an engine shed, carriage shed, water column, signalbox and extensive sidings serving various cattle docks.
Flash forward to the late 1970s and there’s still a lot of the infrastructure remaining, including the old brown and cream station buildings, albeit in poor condition.
It looks like the perfect spot for a heritage railway and by the end of the decade local railway enthusiast James Gordon managed to open a 2ft narrow-gauge railway running for about a mile to Haughton Country Park.
The railway used track, wagons and a locomotive dating from the 1930s rescued from an industrial peat-cutting operation at New Pitsligo and officially opened in 1980, later expanding to use the reconstructed station buildings of the original terminus.
More steam and diesel engines were purchased over the years along with passenger carriages, but concerns about the condition of the track and rolling stock led to the closure of the railway in 2017.
It reopened six years later as the Alford Valley Community Railway, running weekend round trips to the country park from March to September and handily located for the nearby Grampain Transport Museum and Alford Heritage Museum.
With the station buildings smartly repainted in blue and white, the new railway’s mission has been to restore the track, engine shed and small single-platform station at Haughton Park.
It’s a welcome renaissance. It may be a different gauge, but more than 75 years after the original passenger service closed, visitors can once more board a train at Alford station – and long may that continue.
ALFORD VALLEY RAILWAY
Authorised, under agreement with the GNoSR: 23/6/1856
Merged with GNoSR: 1/8/1866
Opened:
Kintore-Alford 21/3/1859
Closed:
Kintore-Alford
2/1/50 (passengers)
3/1/66 (goods/completely)
Stations
KEMNAY (P 2/1/50 G/CC 3/1/66) [Private sidings remained for a time after 1966.]
MONYMUSK (P 2/1/50 G/CC 3/1/66)
TILLYFOURIE (P 2/1/50 G/CC 15/9/52)
WHITEHOUSE (P 2/1/50 G/CC 3/1/66)
ALFORD (P 2/1/50 G/CC 3/1/66)