Ballochney Railway

The Ballochney Railway was an early railway built near Airdrie, Lanarkshire, now in Monklands, Scotland. It was intended primarily to carry minerals from coal and ironstone pits, and stone quarries, in the area immediately north and east of Airdrie, to market, predominantly over the adjoining Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway. Passengers were carried later.

Trains were pulled by horses at first, although locomotives were employed later on. The mineral extraction was located in high ground and rope-worked inclines were incorporated into the line to bring loaded wagons down. The line used the track gauge of 4 feet 6 inches (1,370 mm), which was already in use on the Monkland and Kirkintilloch line.

It opened in 1828, and in 1848 it amalgamated with two associated railways, forming the Monkland Railways. All of the route is now closed, although much of it can still be discovered.

In 1794 the Monkland Canal was completed, enabling the cheap transport of coal from the Monklands coalfields, south of Airdrie, to the households and industries of Glasgow. Advantageous at first, in time the canal was accused of exploiting its monopoly, and in 1824 the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway (M&KR) was opened, connecting the coalfields to the Forth and Clyde Canal at Kirkintilloch; onward conveyance by canal barge from there to Glasgow and Edinburgh was possible.

Ironstone was also smelted on a small scale at first, and from 1828 James Beaumont Neilson developed the hot blast process of iron smelting, and iron manufacture quickly became a huge industry, centred on Coatbridge, and the M&KR found itself at the centre of this massive industry, connected at first to all the local sources of coal and iron, and to the ironworks.

Coal was already extracted on a small scale in New Monkland, north and east of Airdrie and not directly accessible to the M&KR, and Thomas Grainger, the engineer of the M&KR, prepared a pamphlet proposing a railway from the New Monkland pits to connect with the M&KR. Construction was promised to be cheap, and an Act of Parliament of 5 May 1826 authorised the construction by a new company, the Ballochney Railway Company, with share capital of £18,425 and borrowing powers of £10,000.

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