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Note: text in square brackets is added for clarity and was not part of the location's name.

Description

This two platform terminus was covered with a wooden trainshed, open to the air over the tracks. The station was located on a pier, which could be used at low tide, built on reclaimed land. There were quayside lines on both sides.

The contractor for the pier was Lawson & Co of Rutherglen.

The station was the terminus of the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway from Glasgow, intended to carry coal to the port for export and import iron ore for the Lanarkshire steelworks. The passenger trains to the station connected with steamers running to Arran, the Caledonian Steam Packet Company having been formed two years before. PS Duchess of Hamilton [I] operated to Arran and PS Marchioness of Lorne [I] replaced her in winter.

The station was in direct competition with Ardrossan Winton Pier, owned by the Glasgow and South Western Railway.

The 1923 grouping put both companies into the same ownership, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. This immediately took away much of the purpose of the line. By 1932 the line had closed to regular services although boat trains continued to call, running non stop from the station.

After the opening of the Ardrossan Refinery in the 1930s, an ugly network of piperacks crossed the line just outside the trainshed and again further east.

The station was last used in 1967, officially closed in 1968 and demolished in the 1970s (after 1974). The footprint of the building could still be discerned for years.

The site remained in varied use; storage of boats out of water etc, until redeveloped for housing and parkland.

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