Kilmarnock and Troon Railway
It was constructed to bring coal from pits around Kilmarnock to coastal shipping at Troon Harbour, and passengers were carried.
By the early years of the 19th century, William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, Marquess of Titchfield had acquired extensive lands and other properties in Ayrshire and elsewhere.
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.
With the exception of Laigh Milton Viaduct at Gatehead, and soft ground at Shewalton Moss, the engineering works on the line were light.
[The rails] are not laid on sleepers of wood; but on solid blocks of stone, from 9 to 12 inches in thickness, and generally more than a foot square (in base and surface).
From this mode of construction, the flat part of the rail is frequently filled with dirt and gravel; so much so, as to be little better than a common hard road.
Horses only are used as the propelling power, and they convey thirteen wagons in convoy, each containing about one ton, at the rate of two and a half miles per hour.
This reduced speed is occasioned principally by the great friction caused by the broad construction of the rails, and the wheels of the wagons come in contact, which is constantly thrown off from the horse path.
[1][4] The Edinburgh Encyclopædia said, in 1832, The only public railway of extent in Scotland, is that between the manufacturing town of Kilmarnock and the harbour of Troon; which, agreeably to act of Parliament, is open to all on payment of a certain toll.
[2] When full locomotive operation was being implemented, it was replaced by a wooden bridge a little to the south, in order to ease the curve on the eastern approach.
This was before the full opening of the line; it is possible that passengers were travelling over the viaduct to cross the River Irvine, as there was no ordinary bridge nearby.
[10] Baron Charles Dupin made a tour in Great Britain; Dendy Marshall[2] thought that Dupin saw passenger vehicles ("I saw some diligences"), but the text is ambiguous: A horse easily pulls five tons in going from Kilmarnock to Troon, and climbs back with empty wagons, traversing a gradient of 1 in 576.
[20] Local newspapers carried an advertisement that The Caledonia would carry passengers and goods from Kilmarnock to Troon upon the Iron Railway, starting on Saturday the 27th of June, from Gargieston, "until the road is forwarded to Kilmarnock", (i.e. the line was not completed) "and every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, afterwards at quarter past nine in the morning; and will leave Troon at six o’clock the same evening".
"[21][22] Paterson advertised a resumption of the service the next Spring; the "inside" fare was 2s 6d; evidently the Caledonia was made on the same lines as a stagecoach.
Smiles recorded: The first engine constructed by Mr Stephenson to order, after the Killingworth model, was made for the Duke of Portland in 1817, for use upon his tramroad, about ten miles long, extending from Kilmarnock to Troon, in Ayrshire.
[28]A local man, John Kelso Hunter, saw the engine when it started at Kilmarnock, and many years later recalled what he had seen as a boy: The carcase sat on three pairs of wheels.
The road that used to be trod by the auld horse was in some places high in the centre, and on those heights did the teeth wheels on the axle trees rest, bending both them and the rods by which motion was attained.
As a power out of place, the giant had to be laid aside for a time.The load hauled by the locomotive was little more than that pulled by a good horse, although at about twice the velocity, advantages more than outweighed by the considerable costs involved, not least for the replacement of broken rails.
[25] In the New Statistical Account of 1845 a brief description of the K&TR, written by three ministers of the town in 1839, ended rather casually: We may mention that, in 1816, a locomotive engine, the first of its kind started in Scotland, was tried.
It was intended to convey coal to Troon from the Duke of Portland's colliery, but, from its defective construction and ill adaptation to flat rails, it only drew ten tons at the rate of five miles an hour.
It had been sent from Kilmarnock to Charlestown, Fife, in August/September 1824, but being found too heavy for the rails it was installed as a stationary pumping engine at Lord Elgin's limestone quarry in 1825.
It was not until 1818 that the pits had a rail connection, and it was a longer branch line, about 2.5 miles (4 km) long, from Drybridge; this avoided a river crossing.
[35] There must have been some belated dissatisfaction with the plateway as a design, for this branch was built using fish-belly edge rails set in iron chairs spiked to stone blocks, and to a track gauge of 3 ft 4 in (1,016 mm), preventing through running on to the main line.
[4] After some delay application was made to Parliament for authority to convert their line for locomotive operation, and was passed as the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway Act 1837 (7 Will.
The work must have involved conversion of the track to edge rails and standard gauge, and easing of a number of sharp curves.
[38] The GPK&AR desired to consolidate their routes in the area, and they took a lease of the K&TR; this was authorised by the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict.
[11][36] On 1 March 1847 the GPK&AR opened a connecting line at Kilmarnock to its station,[37] swinging north from a junction at St Marnock's.
The two semi-detached houses adjacent are on open ground depicted in the 1895 Ordnance Survey map,[40] and may be on the land occupied by the railway terminal frontage.
The south-west to north-east alignment can clearly be distinguished (from satellite imagery) in hedge lines near Ellis Street and again behind Rugby Road.
At Troon, the alignment can be inferred from satellite images, but little tangible remains, other than street and building names (Duke's Road, Portland House, Titchfield Cottage).
