Newtyle [1st]

Location type

Station

Name and dates

Newtyle [1st] (1831-1868)

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

Opened on the Dundee and Newtyle Railway.
Opened on the Newtyle and Glammiss Railway.
Opened on the Newtyle and Coupar Angus Railway.

Description

This was the northern terminus of the Dundee and Newtyle Railway. The terminus building still stands. It is one of the oldest stations in Britain and probably the oldest trainshed in existence.

The station was at the north end of the Hatton Incline, the line descending to the station. To the east was the Newtyle Mill (a chemical works, processing bones). Newtyle was a planned town/village and is to the west.

Opinion varies as to whether this building opened with the line's extension to Newtyle in 1832, it may have been built shortly afterwards. Given the extent of the facilities at Dundee, it may well have opened in 1832 and was then rebuilt several times including in 1836 and 1860.

It is a long trainshed with rubble walls and stone arched entries at either end (small arches on west side and larger, through which two lines entered latterly, on the east side). Offices, which were on the east side adjoining the shed, do not survive. The appearance probably dates from the conversion into a goods shed as early views show a building with a very similar roof but without the stone arches at either end. The single storey extension, outwith the trainshed, to the north on the west side, is almost certainly a later addition. It stands on a platform which extended down the west side of the station through the train shed.

Gersham Cumming's etching view looking south of Newtyle station and the incline shows a different end to the north end of the building and with a taller building on east side (and an arch/bridge over line half way up incline). The building appears to be open sided with a roof supported on posts over the line. It could be unreliable, five lines are shown under the roof with some confusion about which rails to place a wagon on. However the loading bank and Hatton Engine are well represented. Possibly the ends were rebuilt as they are today (a style similar to the arches of the former Peebles [CR]) around the time of conversion into a goods shed.

To the east, at the south end, was the Newtyle Chemical Works (Newtyle Bone Works) served by turnplate and a siding from the north. At the north end, on the east side, was a crane on a stepped circular base and a loading bank.

The line was extended west and east by two railways, the Newtyle and Coupar Angus Railway and the Newtyle and Glammis Railway respectively.

A deviation, avoiding the incline, was opened to the west in 1868 and the station closed to passengers, a new Newtyle [2nd] station opening nearby. The line south was closed and lifted but the line northwards was retained and the station was converted into a goods shed. A platform was added on the west side, partly inside the trainshed, and entry arches formed at either end. At the north end an extension was added outside the trainshed, the platform extending alongside. Once again opinion varies, this may not be the same building, but on the same footprint.

By the 1960s the two lines through the trainshed were not looped with each other, that next to the platform (west side) was a dead end siding, the other was the southern end of a loop (the remains of a small marshalling yard) which ran north extended out of the shed northwards (above the arch was two areas of soot at the north end, but not the south). A siding ran from the east side of the loop.

Adjoining buildings on the east side, the ticket office and other facilities, have been lost but the main building remains intact.

The line remained open to Newtyle [1st] from Alyth Junction until 1964.

The building has survived complete closure of the line and the approach line to the north was lifted, the former approach now being housing.

There are plans to convert the building into housing.

Tags

Station terminus

Aliases

Newtyle Old

External links

Canmore site record
NLS Collection OS map of 1892-1914
NLS Collection OS map of 1944-67
NLS Map
NLS Map
NLS Map




News items

01/08/2023Six-house conversion of historic Scottish railway shed underway in Angus village [The Courier]
14/02/2023Six-house approval could finally signal new era for 1830s Newtyle railway sheds [The Courier]
22/08/2022Dangerous 190-year-old stonework forces developers to tweak Newtyle railway sheds housing plan [The Courier]
08/04/2021Planning go-ahead for housing conversion of historic Newtyle railway buildings [Evening Telegraph]
08/01/2021Heritage body lifts barrier of opposition to residential development of historic Angus railway sheds [The Courier]
07/12/2020Developers come back with redesign to breathe new life into historic Newtyle railway buildings [The Courier]

Books


Dundee and Newtyle Railway Including the Alyth and Blairgowrie Branches (Oakwood Library of Railway History)

Railways of Dundee (Oakwood Library of Railway History)