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Description

This signal box controlled a junction on the Ardeer explosives works branch. To the north the line ran to Stevenston (both CR and GSWR lines). It was a single track line with a loop at the signal box. To the south the line split into the new (west), old (central) and new (east) approaches to the works.

The works was expanded with the commencement of the Great War, and particularly with the 1915 'Shell Crisis', a Government owned cordite production area being added.

(An even older approach to the early part of the works was made from the Ardeer Iron Works to Lucknow Pit mineral line, running to into the dunes on the west side of the Ardeer peninsula to British Dynamite Co Works and Sidings. This was out of use by this time.)

There was a severe explosion on the railway in 1915 which shut down TNT production.

The western new approach ran towards the Ardeer Iron Works slag hill, to the south east of that works.

The eastern new approach led to a yard of exchange sidings controlled by Ardeer Factory Signal Box. The box closed after the Great War in 1922. The Government owned cordite factory had closed after the war.

Ardeer Platform was opened in 1926 on the old central approach to the works, cut back with a buffer and a platform added.

The Misk box closed in 1965 and was replaced by a ground frame. Ardeer Platform closed in 1966.

The Misk branch fell out of use in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

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