Kilmarnock and Troon Railway

The Kilmarnock and Troon Railway was an early railway line in Ayrshire, Scotland. It was constructed to bring coal from pits around Kilmarnock to coastal shipping at Troon Harbour, and passengers were carried.

It opened in 1812, and was the first railway in Scotland to obtain an authorising Act of Parliament; it was also the first railway in Scotland to use a steam locomotive; the first to carry passengers; and the River Irvine bridge, Laigh Milton Viaduct, is the earliest railway viaduct in Scotland. It was a plateway, using L-shaped iron plates as rails, to carry wagons with flangeless wheels.

In 1841, when more modern railways had developed throughout the West of Scotland, the line was converted from a plateway to a railway and realigned in places. The line became part of the Glasgow and South Western Railway system. Much of the original route is part of the present-day Kilmarnock to Barassie railway line, although the extremities of the original line have been lost.

By the early years of the nineteenth century, William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, Marquess of Titchfield had acquired extensive lands and other properties in Ayrshire and elsewhere. When his father died in 1809, he became the 4th Duke of Portland. He owned coal workings at Kilmarnock, and in these early years transport of minerals to market required the use of coastal shipping; Ireland was an important destination.

Already in 1790, about 40% of the 8,000 tons annual production went by horse and cart to the sea at Irvine. Kilmarnock is ten miles (16 km) or so from the sea, and about 1806 he started to make a harbour at The Troon (nowadays referred to simply as Troon). He had earlier considered a canal connection to there from Kilmarnock, but had changed his intention to a railway. He approached other landowners in the district to obtain their consent, and participation, in making a railway connection between Kilmarnock and the harbour, saying, "The plan to which I allude is for the purpose of making an iron rail road or railway from the Troon Point to Kilmarnock."

Evidently these approaches were successful in obtaining the landowners' consent, although very little financial commitment:

The total subscribed capital was £38,500.

Bentinck appointed William Jessop as the engineer for the construction of the line; he had been engineer on the Surrey Iron Railway and the Croydon and Merstham railway

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