Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway

However, before the era of a proper road network, the canal had a virtual monopoly of transport, and it set its prices accordingly; so successful was its exploitation of the situation that it "for many years yielded a dividend of Cent.

"[5]At first the railway did not own wagons or horses to pull them, and independent hauliers operated over the line, paying the company a toll for the privilege.

From this point it runs about a mile westwards, passing close to the north of the [William Dixon's] Calder Iron Works; it then turns to the north-west, and about half a mile farther on, crosses the Edinburgh and Glasgow road by Airdrie, at the same point this road crosses the Monkland Canal by the Coat Bridge.

First to follow the M&KR was the Ballochney Railway, opened in 1828, and running eastwards from the end of the Kipps branch to "that part of the Monkland Coal Field to the North and East of Airdrie".

At first it was to diverge from the M&KR near Bedlay and run more or less directly to Townhead, but its proprietors had second thoughts and changed the point of junction to Gartsherrie Bridge.

Passing through remote moorland with few mineral deposits actually being worked the Slamannan line was never a success, and the opening of the better engineered Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in 1842 dealt it a near-fatal blow.

As inter-city railways developed elsewhere, they adopted what had become the standard gauge of 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm), and they quickly became the dominant transport medium.

In 1834-5 a basin was constructed by the Forth and Clyde Canal at Kirkintilloch on M&KR land; originally the transshipment point had been a simple canalside wharf.

The plan was to load wagons from the M&KR for onward conveyance to any point on the Canal; as well as factory sidings this apparently included transfer to seagoing vessels at Grangemouth, and possibly Bowling.

At small locations, individual wagons were probably manoeuvred onto hard standing, not necessarily to siding tracks, and the arrangement avoided two transshipments of the material carried.

In December 1835 the M&KR expended £81 for new wagons and for cutting rails, i.e. making the approach to the loading point at Kirkintilloch.

c. lxx) for a substantial increase in its capital, to £124,000, "for the purpose of re-laying the line with heavy rails, and otherwise providing for the augmented traffic".

Gartsherrie Iron Works had been contained between the Monkland Canal and the railway, and the line was shifted eastwards, close to Sunnyside Street, to enable the ironworks to be expanded.

[4][15][16] A key factor in the ability to run locomotives at this early date was the use of Birkinshaw patent 'malleable' wrought iron rails, rolled by machine to 15-foot (4.57 m) lengths.

The first railway coach constructed in Scotland for the conveyance of passengers, made a trial journey in the neighbourhood of Airdrie on Tuesday.

At first, from 1 June 1831 this was a horse-drawn service, but a few weeks later the G&GR put a locomotive, called St Rollox on, running as far as Gartsherrie.

In June 1831 there was a horse-drawn service from Calder Iron Works (on the M&KR) to Gartsherrie, connecting there with the Leaend to Glasgow service, and in the summer of 1832 the G&GR advertised a service from Cairnhill Bridge (near the Calder Iron Works) to Glasgow, and also from "Clarkston": the Clarkston Wester Moffat location on the Ballochney Railway, via Kipps: A Railway Carriage starts from Clarkston and Cairnhill Bridge every Wednesday at a quarter to 8 o'clock A.M. and returns with the evening train from the Railway Depot.

In the earliest days horse drawn trains probably stopped wherever someone wanted to board or alight, without formal station premises.

A connecting service was run southwards to Cairnhill Bridge, but this was shortened back to terminate at Whifflat (now called Whifflet) on 1 December 1850.

Martin says that there was a stationary engine in 1836 for the accommodation of the traffic coming from the Wishaw Railway, and quotes accounts for the purchase of winding apparatus and ropes.

Also in December 1844, a horse-drawn passenger conveyance ran from Kirkintilloch to the Bothlin Viaduct, at the point of intersection, (i.e. over the northern extremity of the M&KR) for connectional purposes, but this seems to have been short-lived.

[3] The M&KR altered its track gauge to standard on 26 and 27 July 1847, and on the following day the Airdrie service was able to run through to Glasgow (Queen Street) via Bishopbriggs; the journey now took 45 minutes.

In 1844 the M&KR had built a short spur to transshipment sidings with the E&GR at Garngaber, a little east of the present-day Lenzie station.

The inconvenience of the transshipment emphasised the fact that their now non-standard track gauge prevented easy transfer of traffic to the developing railway network.

At this time, promoters were forwarding the idea of a railway from Carlisle, connecting with the developing English network, and they needed a route from the Southern Uplands into Glasgow.

Trains on the north-south axis, from Motherwell towards Stirling, used the short section of the M&KR route between Gartsherrie and Garnqueen as already described.

This was an exceedingly inconvenient arrangement, and in 1871 the Monkland Railways built the line at a higher level, crossing Bank Street by a large lattice iron bridge.

There had been a mineral siding running eastward from the level crossing location to a pit and iron works near the present day Coatbank Street roundabout.

When the main line was reconstructed, a new connection to the siding was formed from a junction a short distance further south, and a Sheepford goods station was provided.

In the twentieth century the best days of the Monklands iron industry were past, and gradual decline set in, and the duplication of access to the remaining pits and works was damaging for the former M&KR line.