Promoted independently, it was absorbed by the Caledonian Railway to give access to Dumfriesshire and later to Portpatrick for the Irish ferry service.

The Burgh of Dumfries was dominant in the area, and the stage route between Carlisle and Glasgow and Edinburgh ran through Lockerbie.

[3] The arrival of the railway brought cheap coal to the communities served, and helped farmers by cheaply bringing fertiliser in and farm produce away.

The DL&LJR set up an independent goods station, named St Mary's, on the east side of the G&SWR line.

The opportunity was taken to relocate the pointsman's place of duty at the summit of the slope at the deep cutting north of Dumfries station.

The Castle Douglas and Lockerbie railways formed junctions with the G&SWR line in the cutting opposite the pointsman's tower...

This gave the CR access to the traffic from the north of Ireland, which was the shortest sea route, between Donaghadee and Stranraer.

The CR were able to insist that traffic from Stranraer to Glasgow and Edinburgh was routed over their own line via Lockerbie, using the DL&LR.

[18] At this period, the CR proposed to build a line from Lochmaben to Dinwoodie, on the West Coast Main Line several miles to the north of Lockerbie, to make a more direct connection from Dumfries to the north; this would have avoided the reversal at Lockerbie, but the scheme was not proceeded with.

The time penalty incurred by the extra mileage was viewed with disfavour by other partners in the service, particularly the ferry operator which was competing with other routes between Ireland and Britain.

[19] As part of the scheme a signalbox controlling the entrance to St Mary's goods yard, from the Lockerbie line, was abolished.

[11] David L Smith noted that there was a tremendous amount of traffic to be handled at Dumfries during World War II with locomotive power augmented accordingly.

The collision was relatively mild, but the Up line was obstructed, and an Up express passenger train collided with them, being derailed onto the station platform.

The driver of the first train, the Lockerbie station master and the District Inspector were all criticised in the subsequent report on the crash.