Lanark station has suffered many cuts

Rail travel has made a very important contribution to the economic development of Lanark over the past 150 years and hopefully that will be allowed to continue.

People could take a train from Lanark to Muirkirk and then go on to Ayr; there was a direct connection to Edinburgh and the Glasgow connection, which still exists. This article will explore the history of these connections and the station.

It is worth mentioning that the town actually had two stations at one time. The second one was Lanark Race Course station which was built on the Lanark to Muirkirk line in 1910 to provide a station for visitors to the airshow. This was completed in six months so that it was fully functional by June 1910 which was just as well as over 300,000 people came to the airshow in a week, the majority by train.

The first connection was the Lanark spur which enabled trains to go from Lanark to Glasgow and Edinburgh by linking Lanark to the West Coast Line. This happened in 1855 and was originally privately financed but it was not long before the Caledonian Railway Company took over.

This move was part of a wider strategy to take a line from Lanark through to Muirkirk which was achieved in 1864; the motivation for this was to tap into the coal business which was more lucrative than passengers.

Gradually as the coal mines began to close, there was not the money to be made out of taking the coal from Douglas Water and other mines. Thus the Muirkirk line was closed down due to the Beeching cuts in the 1960s and it was not long before the Edinburgh connection was cut too.

In that case the spur to Edinburgh was closed by 1971 and now the bridge for it is demolished and houses are built over the spur.

For many years it has been the desire of the people of Clydesdale to see this connection restored and a group called CRAG – the Clydesdale Rail Action Group – was formed by Ralph Barker to take this forward.

Occasionally there have been encouraging noises from the Government but no positive action.

In September 2021, a decision was taken to reduce the Lanark/Glasgow service to once an hour. Hopefully this decision is reversed so that people feel encouraged to travel by rail again.