Glasgow railway tunnel

Glasgow Railway Tunnel

By AlMac

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, and was a major industrial center in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is currently one of the only cities in the UK to have an underground railway system, and is definitely the only one in Scotland to have one. Rail travel, both above and below ground, has always been vital to the life of the city. As the city has developed over the decades, railway lines have been built and abandoned as needs dictate. One major old line was the Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire Railway which cut across the west of the city. It was opened in 1896, and traveled for many miles through several stations across the area. Several sections of this railway were underground, especially as the line moved into the centre of the city. Eventually the line became less and less used, until gradually the stations along it began to be closed off. In 1942, the Kelvinside station was closed, and the line itself was shut down for good soon after.

The Kelvinside station sat, surprisingly enough, beside the River Kelvin in the west end of the city. It was a busy two-platform station with an above ground ticket office and stairs which led down to the subterranean platforms and line.
Nowadays, the area in which the station was located is taken up by the Glasgow Botanic Gardens - a lovely sprawling park with beautiful landscaped gardens which attracts a huge number of visitors on sunny summer days. Very little evidence remains to suggest that there used to be a large railway station on the site, and indeed very few people even seem to be aware that such a thing used to exist there.

While few people know that the station used to be there, even fewer know that it is still there. Beneath the rolling lawns and happy picnicking families, an abandoned relic sits in silence. The only evidence of its existence comes in the form of two fenced-off areas in an out-of-the-way area of the park, which look down into an underground ... something. Even these two holes are too hard to get near for anything to be clearly seen down them.

This is one of the holes outside in the Botanic Gardens. You really can't see anything down there because it's so difficult to get close to.

After clambering through a daunting amount of undergrowth and down a very well-hidden hill, this is what we saw first.

Off in the distance, the tunnel entrance. We're standing on what used to be the railway line, at what I think was an outside section of the station.

Looking back towards the tunnel entrance, which we had just come through.

The next thing which we came across. I don't know what it was, but it sure was Long Time Dead.

Then, as we rounded a corner in the pitch black of the tunnel, we found the station itself. It's hard to describe how beautiful it looked, with the sun streaming down through the roof holes.

Looking up back out of the Botanic Garden holes.

This picture shows just how dark it was in there. Also, our torch batteries were not of the highest quality and so we had to use them in short bursts to conserve power :(

This did not help when there were big fuck-off holes in the ground every so often which it would have been real easy to break our ankles in, like this one.

We found a creepy little alcove place, which had obviously been used as a makeshift camp by unknown people.

Beside this alcove were some terrifying rusty stairs which led to absolutely nowhere.

Other people had obviously been down there many times before, as suggested by all the (bizarre) graffiti that we found.