Although a remote location today the facility would have served freight transport requirements in the form of such items as lime for the fields, cattle, horse and sheep movements, milk delivery, coal transport movements and related items, etc.

The Glasgow, Dumfries and Carlisle Railway opened sidings at Mennock for the Leadhills and Wanlockhead mines on 28 October 1850.

The lead mines lay about 5 miles (8 km) to the northeast via the steep Mennock Pass.

[4] Bill Lockhart was an occasional signalman at the Mennock box as traffic required in the late 1920s and recalled an occasion when lambs to be loaded into cattle trucks from the pens, however they bolted onto the tracks and had to be rounded up by the farmer and his sheep dogs.

A toll house at that date stood just to the north of the junction on the western side, entered by an unusual walled path and standing on a large masonry base that still exists.

[4] In 1898 the Mennock Lye signal box was open 'Day & Night' and had the call sign on the cabin speaking circuit of 'M K'.

[13] It was 67 miles and 68 chains from Glasgow Bridge Street railway station as measured via Dalry and Kilmarnock.

[4] The goods depot at Mennock Lye was originally opened by the Glasgow, Dumfries and Carlisle Railway in 1850.

An engineers track access point and materials storage area exists slightly to the south of the old depot's location.