Burntisland Railway Station


(An t-Eilean Loisgte)

Burntisland Railway Station (known in Gaelic as An t-Eilean Loisgte) is located a quarter-mile (0.5 km) south southeast of the town centre, next to Burntisland Harbour in Fife. It is preceded by Aberdour Railway Station, 2½ miles (4 km) to the west, and followed by Kinghorn, a similar distance to the east northeast. This fine classical station building was the work of Thomas Grainger (1794 - 1852) and John Miller (1805-83) and began as the southern terminus of the Edinburgh & Northern Railway in 1847. Passengers from Edinburgh crossed the Firth of Forth on a ferry from Granton, while goods crossed on the world's first roll-on roll-off ferry, the Leviathan, from 1850. The company also established its workshops in Burntisland. The Edinburgh & Northern was taken over by the North British Railway in 1862 and Burntisland's role as a terminus ended with the opening of the Forth Bridge in 1890.

Now operated by ScotRail, Burntisland Railway Station is staffed part-time and is used by more than 220,000 passengers per annum (2015). Although physically located on the East Coast Main Line, it is only local services on the Fife Circle Line which stop here.

An error by a signalman in 1914 caused an express passenger train to collide with a freight train, killing two people. Burntisland served as a regional control centre for the railways since 1920, when the former Forth Hotel was converted to become the Burntisland Railway Control Centre. This controlled train movements over a wide area of E Scotland; from Bridge of Earn and Montrose in the north, to Causewayhead (near Stirling) in the west, as far south as the Forth Bridge. The staff and functions of the centre were relocated to Waverley Station in Edinburgh in 1965, and complete closure followed in 1970. The Burntisland Emergency Railway Control Centre was begun in 1955 but never completed.


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