Glasgow Queen Street (Glaschu Sràid na Banrighinn in Gaelic) is a railway station in Glasgow, Scotland and is the city's second main line terminus. The station is the third busiest station in Scotland. It is situated between George Street to the south and Cathedral Street Bridge to the north, at the northern end of Queen Street adjacent to George Square.


Services

Queen Street is the main gateway to northern and eastern Scotland from Glasgow (with Glasgow Central station serving the South and rest of the UK), and is built on two levels. The station is managed by First ScotRail who operate all of the passenger services including the flagship Glasgow to Edinburgh shuttle.

High Level

The high level station serves a mainline to Edinburgh, with modern diesel trains completing the journey to the capital in around 45 minutes, with onward connections to Fife. The mainline to Aberdeen also runs from Queen Street Station. This Aberdeen line runs to Perth and Dundee while terminating at Aberdeen/Dyce. Services to Inverness along the Highland Main Line also depart from here, as do trains on the West Highland Line to Fort William, Mallaig and Oban. The high level station was remodelled in the early 1960's and currently has 7 platforms, although platform 1 can only accomdate a 3-car DMU (diesel multiple unit).

The main line approaches to the station come through the 1000 yards long Queen Street Tunnel, which runs beneath the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre to the Sighthill area northeast of the city centre where the tracks emerge and diverge to their various routes. Following the demolition in 1977 of St Enoch Station, which was situated near the opposite end of Queen Street, the high-level station is now the only vaulted railway station left in Scotland. Following the construction of an office block in front of the George Square station entrance in the 1970s, the main station building is effectively screened from view.

Low Level

The low level station forms the hub of the North Clyde Line of the Glasgow suburban electric network. Trains run frequently between Helensburgh, on the Firth of Clyde, and Airdrie — on the edge of the Greater Glasgow conurbation.

The low level line was electrified in 1960 to the 25kV AC 50Hz standard, with the central area, Springburn, Bridgeton and Milngavie branches and the Yoker loop at 6.25kV AC, later converted to 25kV throughout as insulation technology improved. Electrification brought the introduction of the legendary and locally-built Class 303 electric multiple unit, joined in 1967 by the similar, Sheffield-built Class 311, which survived only until the early 1990s.

The trains were quickly nicknamed the "Blue Trains" by Glaswegians owing to their bright Caledonian Blue colour scheme. This was later changed to the standard British Rail blue/grey livery in the 1970s, then to the distinctive SPT orange-and-black scheme in the 1980s. A few units received the new SPT carmine/cream livery in the late 1990s. The last Class 303 train operated on the North Clyde Line on 30 December 2002, specially formed of two units, nos. 303011 and 303088 after an impressive 42 years of service.

The stretch of this line between High Street, Queen Street and Charing Cross was in fact built before the Glasgow Subway, making it the oldest piece of underground railway in the city. There are two low level platforms, numbered 8 and 9, although prior to electrification there were four, which were not numbered but lettered A, B, C and D.


History

The station was originally built for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, opened on 18 February 1842, which became part of the North British Railway on 4 July 1844. The climb through the tunnel to Cowlairs was at 1 in 42 and until 1909 trains were hauled up on a rope operated by a stationary engine although experiments were carried out using banking engines between 1844/48. In 1945 there was a minor railway accident when a train leaving the station slipped to a standstill and rolled back into another train. Modern diesel trains have no difficulty with the climb.

The adjacent Buchanan Street station of the rival Caledonian Railway was closed on 7 November 1966 as a result of the Beeching axe and its services to Stirling, Perth, Inverness, Dundee and Aberdeen were transferred to Queen Street. This caused difficulties with longer trains, as Queen Street is in a confined position between George Square and the tunnel and barely takes six coaches. Current trains, however, are usually of two to six coaches, running more frequently.


Signalling

Queen Street signal box, opened in 1881, was located on a gantry spanning the tracks close to the tunnel mouth. It closed on 26 February 1967 when control of the High Level station was transferred to a panel in Cowlairs signal box. That box was superseded by the new Cowlairs signalling centre on 28 December 1998.

The Low Level station had two signal boxes, 'Queen Street West' and 'Queen Street East'. Both boxes were situated over the tracks and both were closed on 8 February 1960. The low level lines came under the control of Yoker Signalling Centre (IECC) on 19 November 1989.

In early 2007, Network Rail began construction work on a new Glasgow Signalling Centre on the Cowlairs site which will ultimately replace signal boxes in the Glasgow area, north and south of the River Clyde.


Proposals

Various schemes to link Queen Street to Central Station have been considered over the years, as Glasgow's weakest link in railway terms is that passengers travelling from the north of Scotland to the south via Glasgow and vice-versa have to traverse the city centre by road via a shuttle bus, or on foot. Even the Glasgow Underground serves neither main line station, although Buchanan Street underground station is at least adjacent to Queen Street.

The preferred solution to the problem is a Crossrail initiative which would use a disused freight line which links High Street to the Gorbals area. This initiative was recently awarded a grant from the Scottish Executive to investigate costs for possible link to be built between the two halves of the Glasgow rail network. A date of 2009 is estimated for completion of the project.

In August 2006, Network Rail revealed that it intends to redevelop Queen Street substantially, making use of the Hanover Street car park area to provide more retail space, and also to upgrade the station's entrances.