Скачать или смотреть Trains at Whifflet (WL, AL, MCL) - 28/05/2025

The 265th video of my train spotting adventures.
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This video follows on from the previous day at Carstairs and Motherwell, this time heading North of Motherwell to Whifflet railway station. A small, 2-platform DfT Category E "Small staffed" train station, it was opened by British Rail in 1992. The station became the terminus for the former Rutherglen and Coatbridge Railway (R&CR) route from Glasgow Central when that route reopened to passenger traffic on the 4th October 1993. The station on this site is completely new - services originally operated from Glasgow Central High Level to Coatbridge Central over the R&CR route up until their demise (due to the Beeching Axe) on 7 November 1966.
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Whifflet had no fewer than three other stations serving it in the past, along with a complex network of routes operated by several different pre-grouping companies (including the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway and Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway). All of them - the ex-M&KR/NBR depot on the line from Sunnyside Junction (which was sited a short distance east of the current station) and the Caledonian Railway's bi-level Whifflet Upper and Lower stations (located north of Whifflet North Junction where the two lines crossed) had been shut down by the mid-1960s - the North British station was closed in November 1962, whilst both CR ones closed on 5 October 1964 (though the Upper station had been a terminus since 1943).
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When the line from Rutherglen was reopened, using Coatbridge Central as the eastern terminus was ruled out on operational and safety grounds. Trains on the new line would have had to use the single track connection from Langloan West Junction to reach Coatbridge and the use of single lead junctions for new services was discouraged at the time following two recent fatal accidents in the area (at Bellgrove and Newton) involving such layouts. Re-doubling this stretch of line wasn't considered to be economically justifiable, so a route using the double line curve to Whifflet North was chosen, with the station acting as the new terminus for the route in addition to serving the local area.
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It has also been a stop on the Motherwell to Cumbernauld Line since the route began operating in 1996 and is now served by Argyle Line electric trains between Motherwell and Cumbernauld via Coatbridge Central, the line through here having been wired in 1981 to provide access to the container terminal at Gartsherrie for electrically hauled freight trains (and subsequently extended north through to Cumbernauld in May 2014 as part of the Cumbernauld Line electrification scheme).
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The line to Glasgow was also electrified in 2014. Originally due to be completed prior to the Commonwealth Games being held in the city, it was not commissioned until the December 2014 timetable change. This is still four years earlier than originally planned and has seen the route incorporated into the Argyle Line and freed up the DMUs in use previously for redeployment elsewhere. Open access operator Grand Union Trains plans to use the station on a Stirling to London Euston service to begin in 2025.
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Filmed on the:
Whifflet Line
Argyle Line
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Services seen:
SR) Services towards Coatbridge Central, Greenfaulds, Cumbernauld, Motherwell, Hamilton Central, Newton, Cambuslang, Kirkwood, Mount Vernon, Rutherglen, Argyle Street, Glasgow Central (low-level), Partick and Dalmuir.
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Trains seen:
SR) Class 318, Class 320, Class 344 Juniper
FL) Class 90
DB) Class 66
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