This is a four platform station with two platforms on the Ardrossan Harbour / Largs branch and two platforms on the line south to Ayr. There was an extensive goods yard on the west side, approached from the north, but this is reduced to a pair of civil engineer sidings.
The Ardrossan and Johnstone Railway probably terminated in the west side of the station at Kilwinning Byres. Once that line became the Ardrossan Railway a junction was made at the north end of the station with the Glasgow to Ayr line of the Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway.
A large station building was built by the later Glasgow and South Western Railway in the V of the junction between the down platform of the Ardrossan side and the up platform of the Ayr side.
There was a competing station of the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway built just to the east in the 1880s called Kilwinning East.
There was a signal box at the north end of the station, east side of the junction, until electrification of the line in the 1980s. It was not the original box having been replaced in 1887. It closed in 1986, replaced by the Paisley Signalling Centre.
/ /1829 | Ardrossan and Johnstone Railway Construction begins. 5.5 mile line from Ardrossan to Kilwinning. The line was a horse-drawn waggonway of gauge 4ft 6in. |
20/08/1883 | Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway Act receives Royal assent as the Barrmill and Kilwinning Railway. The original proposal was a local line to link the Glasgow and Kilmarnock Joint Railway at Barrmill (joint G&SWR and CR) to the Glasgow, Paisley Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway at Kilwinning (G&SWR). |
/ /1884 | Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway Authorisation given for extension from Ardrossan [CR] to Ardrossan [Montgomerie] Pier, use of the existing Ardrossan Harbour lines and an Ardeer branch. Glengarnock Iron Works and Kilbirnie [CR] branch authorised. Authorisation for the Irvine [CR] branch. Curve between the Irvine and Ardrossan branches authorised. Proposed link to the Glasgow and South Western Railway at Kilwinning abandoned. |
/ /1888 | Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway Abandonment of authorisation of a link to the Glasgow and South Western Railway in Kilwinning. |
/ /1918 | Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway Glasgow and South Western Railway authorised to widen the line between Kilwinning and Irvine (close to the Eglinton Bank Signal Box) where it passed over the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway's Kilwinning [CR] to Stevenston [Moorpark] line. Reciprical agreement allowed the L&A to widen their line in the future (G&SW was to be liable for half of the costs of a widened bridge).. |
31/91/1999 | Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway Derailment at Kilwinning. |