Kirkconnel railway station

Kirkconnel Scottish Gaelic: Cille Chonbhaill[1]
Up (southbound) platform
General information
Location	Kirkconnel, Dumfries and Galloway Scotland
Coordinates	55.3875°N 3.9988°W / 55.3875; -3.9988
Grid reference	NS735122
Managed by	ScotRail
Platforms	2
Other information
Station code	KRK
History
Original company	Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway
Key dates
28 October 1850[2]	Opened
Passengers
2019/20	19,880
2020/21	1,260
2021/22	11,190
2022/23	13,954
2023/24	19,350
Notes Passenger statistics from the Office of Rail and Road

Kirkconnel railway station is a railway station in the town of Kirkconnel, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The station is unstaffed, owned by Network Rail and managed by ScotRail.

History

Kirkconnel is situated on the former Glasgow and South Western Railway main line between Kilmarnock and Carlisle. It was one of the few stations on the route to avoid the Beeching Axe in the mid-1960s and was the only intermediate station between Kilmarnock and Dumfries for many years.

The railway poet

A plaque at the station commemorates Alexander Anderson, the poet from Kirkconnel, who rose from being a railway worker to become Chief Librarian at the University of Edinburgh. He was a surfaceman or platelayer on the Glasgow and South Western Railway, and generally wrote under the name of Surfaceman.^[3]

Services

On Monday to Saturdays, there are nine trains per day in each direction towards Dumfries (six of these continue to Carlisle) and Glasgow Central running on a mostly two-hourly frequency. However, there can be gaps up to four hours at certain times of the day. On Sundays, there is a very limited service of two trains per day in each direction towards Carlisle and Glasgow.

There was previously one train a day to Newcastle on Monday to Saturdays, however this was stopped in the May 2022 timetable change.

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Sanquhar		ScotRail Glasgow South Western Line		New Cumnock

Gallery

• 
  A freight train passing through Kirkconnel
• 

References

1. Brailsford 2017, Gaelic/English Station Index.
2. Butt 1995, p. 136.
3. Alexander Anderson

Sources

• Brailsford, Martyn, ed. (December 2017) [1987]. Railway Track Diagrams 1: Scotland & Isle of Man (6th ed.). Frome: Trackmaps. ISBN 978-0-9549866-9-8.
• Butt, R. V. J. (October 1995). The Directory of Railway Stations: details every public and private passenger station, halt, platform and stopping place, past and present (1st ed.). Sparkford: Patrick Stephens Ltd. ISBN 978-1-85260-508-7. OCLC 60251199. OL 11956311M.

External links

• Video and commentary on Alexander Anderson, poet
• Video and commentary on Kirkconnel Railway Station
• Media related to Kirkconnel railway station at Wikimedia Commons