Disused railway lines and closed stations in South Lanarkshire

169 miles of disused railway
53 closed stations
18 stations open today
40 named lost lines

South Lanarkshire has 169 miles of disused railway and 53 closed stations, against 18 stations still open today. More stations have closed here than remain: 2.9 lost for every one still served. The longest lost line is the Douglas and Muirkirk Branch, with 15 miles of its route inside South Lanarkshire.

See South Lanarkshire’s lost railways on the map

The map opens on the county with the disused lines and closed stations drawn over today’s network. Tap any closed station for its history, or any grey line for its name.

What is left of it

The 169 miles of lost railway in South Lanarkshire break down as 140 miles with the track lifted and the trackbed still traceable, 27 miles built over or ploughed out, with little or no trace left, 1.0 miles dismantled and 0.8 miles with track still in place but no trains. These are OpenStreetMap’s own distinctions, made by the people who surveyed each stretch, so a line can appear under more than one state along its length.

Lost railway lines in South Lanarkshire

40 named lines with disused track in the county, longest stretch first. The mileage is the part inside South Lanarkshire; a line crossing the border is counted on both sides.

Line	Miles in county
Douglas and Muirkirk Branch	15
Strathaven Branch	11
Carstairs & Dolphinton Branch	10
Lesmahawgo Branch	8.6
Darvel and Strathaven Branch	6.8
Alton Heights Junction to Southfield Junction	6.1
Leadhills Branch	5.6
Peebles Branch	4.5
Hamilton Branch	3.7
Blackwood & Stonehouse Branch	3.6
East Kilbride Branch	3.6
Strathaven & Darvel Line	3.6
Stonehouse Branch	3.4
Wilsontown Branch	3.1
Lesmahagow Branch	3.0
Larkhall & Stonehouse Branch	2.9
Quarter Collieries	2.5
Alton Heights Branch	2.4
Fairholm Colliery	2.3
Earnock Quarry	2.0
Castlehill Branch	1.9
Dechmont Branch	1.9
Plotcock Branch	1.3
Blantyre Branch	1.2
Carstairs Electric Railway	1.2
Little Gill Branch	1.2
Douglas Colliery	1.1
Swinhill Colliery	1.1
Swinehill Branch	1.1
Newton West Junction to Carmyle Branch	1.0
Westburn Fork	0.9
Quarter Iron Works	0.8
Blantyre Fork	0.6
Cotcastle Fork	0.6
Home Farm Colliery	0.6
Shawrigg Branch	0.6
Auchinraith Branch	0.5
Overwood Quarry	0.5
Cornsilloch Colliery	0.4
Dunduff Quarry	0.3

Closed railway stations in South Lanarkshire

All 53 closed and former stations in South Lanarkshire, A to Z. Each name opens the map on the station; the Wikipedia link, where there is one, has its history.

Stations still open in South Lanarkshire

18 stations in South Lanarkshire still have a train service. The busiest are Rutherglen (871,338 a year), Cambuslang (831,150 a year), Uddingston (702,066 a year), Hamilton Central (686,520 a year) and Hamilton West (683,164 a year). Every one has its own page, with the stations you can reach from it directly and how often the trains run: see the A to Z of stations.

Lost railways nearby

East Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, West Lothian, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders.

About these figures

The disused lines are the stretches OpenStreetMap records as disused, abandoned, razed or dismantled railway, measured segment by segment and given to the county each segment lies in. The closed stations are Wikidata’s record of British railway stations no longer in service, kept where they are not within a few hundred metres of a station still open. The boundary is today’s council area, from the Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0; contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2024). Historic county lines were different, and a closed station a mile over the border is on the neighbouring page.

Every county · About the disused lines layer · About the closed stations