North Queensferry Railway Station – history

Steam at the station c 1948

As the following account from the Dunfermline Journal 21st June 1890 makes clear, the new railway station at North Queensferry was not ready when the Forth Bridge was officially opened on 4th March 1890.

Trains travelled nonstop between Dalmeny and Inverkeithing. Passengers for North Queensferry had to change onto another train at Inverkeithing to take them south to the station at the Railway Pier – the northern terminus of the old train ferry.

Public outcry led to the building of the present station at the north end of the Forth Bridge.

Dunfermline Journal 21st June 1890

NORTH QUEENSFERRY

NEW RAILWAY STATION – This long looked for station will in a few days be ready for passengers and Mr Walker, manager of the N.B. Railway, has furnished a good and commodious building.

There are platforms on each side of the main line, of over 500 feet long each, by 15 feet broad.  Alongside the railway lines these are carried on brick walls of 2 feet thick, and about 3 feet above the rails.  Copped with Haile’s quarry stone plats and floored behind with 3-inch thick planking, laid on pitch-pine beams, Built into the brick front wall and over 200 pitch pine log pillars.

There is an overhead bridge communicating with both platforms, which are all enclosed with a neat, painted railing, with a stairway leading to both sides.
On the platforms are erected a handsome set of waiting rooms and lavatories, etc, with a suitable ticket office on the east side.  Over two dozen lamps on pillars light the platforms and approaches.

Upwards of 140,000 bricks have been used, and over 4000 super feet of stone pavement.  Nine hundred feet of inch lead piping supply the premises with Dunfermline water, led from the North Ferry main pipe.

The whole of the rooms are lined and finished in selected pitch pine, nicely varnished.
The contractors are Messrs Beatties & Sons, Edinburgh whose foreman joiner, J Riddoch, and William Taylor, bricklayer, have pushed on the work in an efficient manner.  The cost of the station will be over £2000.

Bailie Roberts, Edinburgh, has given every facility for carrying out the work, and has presented the ground free.

The access is at present from the Old North Road, and it could be much improved by reducing the rise on some of the steep bends, but, best of all, to make a road from the Great North Road to the station, about a quarter of a mile long.

Mr Henderson, from Port Edgar is to be station master.

Station plans from April 1891

Station Buildings and footbridge from the 1891 plans

Station plans dated April 1891

Today, the station has been restored as a Forth Bridge Heritage Centre