This article traces the Caledonian Railway branches in South Lanarkshire.
South Lanarkshire contained a huge resource of coal reserves, and the collieries needed an efficient transport medium to get the mineral to market. The Caledonian Railway, in association with friendly independent promoters, generated a network of lines in South Lanarkshire. New lines were constructed right up to 1905, but in the subsequent decades the coal extraction declined and the railway activity with it.
The lines progressively closed completely, with the sole exceptions of the Lanark branch line, and the twenty-first century re-opening of the Larkhall branch.
The geographical scope of this article is the area south of the Hamilton - Motherwell - Carstairs line, as far south-west as Darvel and Muirkirk.
History
The main line
The Caledonian Railway was formed by Act of Parliament on 31 July 1845. Its capital was £1,800,000, at that time a huge sum. There had been a long struggle to get approval for a main line linking central Scotland with the growing English railway network, at Carlisle. The chief difficulty had been designing a route over the difficult terrain of the Southern Uplands, that would be within the capabilities of the locomotives of the time.
The main line was opened between Carlisle and Beattock on 10 September 1847, and from Beattock to Glasgow on 15 February 1848. A second main line from Carstairs to Edinburgh was opened on 1 April 1848.
Lanark was an important town at that time, having a population of 7672 in 1831, and the cotton mills of New Lanark were long established. However the topography around the town, particularly the steep valley of the River Clyde and the tributary Mouse Water, and the hills surrounding the town, prevented a practical alignment of the main line through Lanark itself. A "Lanark" station was provided, about 2 miles (3 km) north-east of the town; the station later became Cleghorn station.
A branch line for Lanark
Local interests decided to rectify the omission of Lanark from the railway network, and in November 1852 the Lanark Branch Railway Company was formed and a provisional Committee appointed. The committee included James Baird, M.P. and John Marr, Provost of Lanark. The capital required to build the line was £6,000. The landowners on the proposed route all consented to sell the necessary land and no Act of Parliament was sought.
The Caledonian was friendly to the little company, and worked the line when it was opened on 5 January 1855. The junction with the main line, named Cleghorn Junction, was aligned for through running from Glasgow to Lanark. The branch was a single line.
The Lanark Branch Railway was purchased by the Caledonian Railway on 23 July 1860 and became an integral part of the Caledonian system.
Motherwell to Lesmahagow and Coalburn
The original purpose of the Caledonian had been the carriage of passengers and goods over long distances, but during the lengthy period before the opening of the main line, the mineral potential of the lands around the Caledonian route became significant. This was enhanced by the flourishing iron industry in the Monklands and elsewhere, which generated a demand for coal and iron ore. The minerals were readily available, and all that was needed was cheap transport.
In 1846 a branch line to collieries in Lesmahagow and Coalburn had been proposed; 63 million tons of workable coal deposits were believed to exist, and an Act authorising its construction was obtained in 1847, but the financial slump of that period, and the serious financial difficulties in which the Caledonian found itself, prevented raising the money to build the line. There was considerable demand for the line, and on 24 July 1851 fresh powers to build it were obtained. The line, called the Lesmahagow Railway, was constructed and it opened on 1 December 1856; it was substantially financed by the coal owners themselves; without a railway, the transport of the coal to market was unaffordable. The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway and the Glasgow and South Western Railway (G&SWR) both hoped to build lines to serve the area, and the struggle, ending with an owning company friendly to the Caledonian, was a close run thing.