This is a two platform station beneath Glasgow Queen Street High Level. Trains at the high level station can be heard arriving and departing from below.
This station was built directly below the already open High Level station (opened in 1842 as the Glasgow terminus of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway) on the Glasgow City and District Railway which connected together North British Railway owned lines in the west and the east of the city with a new set of station serving the city itself. It was immediately an urban line, an alternative to the high level main line station and a part of a network reaching over long distances to Edinburgh Waverley.
The station had four platforms - two westbound on the south side and two eastbound on the north side. The central island platform was narrow. At either end of the platforms the station is open to the air above but the majority of it is entirely covered with the girders supporting the mainline station. There were signal boxes on gantries over the lines at both west and east ends. These were dispensed with in 1960 with re-signalling for the electrification of the line.
The island platform and its lines have been abandoned (lines lifted around 1960), allowing the remaining platforms to be extended onto the trackbed and the lines realigned.
With the closure of Glasgow Central Low Level in 1964 the line through station became the sole east-west standard gauge line across the city until Central Low Level re-opened in 1979. The station walls were 'clad' around 1986.
To the west the Charing Cross Tunnel carries the line to Charing Cross [GC and DR] station and the the east High Street is reached by the High Street Tunnel.