Aberdeen Railway

The Aberdeen Railway was a Scottish railway company which built a line from Aberdeen to Forfar and Arbroath, partly by leasing and upgrading an existing railway.

The line opened in stages between 1847 and 1850, with branches to Brechin and Montrose. The Aberdeen terminus was at Ferryhill, some distance from the centre of Aberdeen. Reaching central Aberdeen was difficult, but was finally achieved in 1854.

The Aberdeen Railway was reliant on other railways further south to reach central Scotland, and in 1856 the Aberdeen Railway joined with the Scottish Midland Junction Railway to form the Scottish North Eastern Railway.

In the 1960s there were two routes from central Scotland to Aberdeen, and rationalisation dictated that a line from Dundee would be retained, and the original Aberdeen Railway route would close. This took place in 1967. Both routes used the same track north of Kinnaber Junction (a little north of Montrose) and this was retained; it is the only section of the original Aberdeen Railway that is still in use. A heritage railway, the Caledonian Railway (Brechin), operates on the former Brechin branch.

The first proposals for a railway to Aberdeen were put forward in 1827 when Robert Stevenson was commissioned to assess the potential; however nothing progressed from his study.

In the 1840s there was a frenzy of railway speculation and promotion in Scotland; this was focussed on the means of connecting central Scotland with the developing English network. Considerable controversy existed for some years while the best route was debated: at first it was assumed that only one route was supportable, and the Caledonian Railway route over the Southern Uplands seemed to be the chosen route. The Caledonian obtained Parliamentary authorisation in the 1845 session, capitalised at £1,500,000, a tremendous sum at the time. The continuous debate in the preceding years had encouraged thoughts of a Scottish network too; this was further facilitated by easy availability of investment money, and the idea of promoting a railway costing hundreds of thousands of pounds seemed suddenly commonplace.

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