Murthly Station And Railway Signal Box

NO13NW 22 10104 38358.

(Location cited as NO 101 383). Murthly Station, opened 1856 by the Perth and Dunkeld Rly. A two-platform through station with one-storey and attic brick offices on the up platform. There is a signal box of standard Highland Rly pattern, and a lattice girder footbridge.

J R Hume 1977.

This intermediate station on the Perth (Stanley Junction) - Inverness main line of the former Highland Rly. was opened by the Scottish Midland Junction (Perth and Dunkeld) Rly on 7 April 1856 and closed to regular passenger traffic on 3 May 1965. The line itself remains in use.

Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 4 September 2000.

G Daniels and L Dench 1980; R V J Butt 1995.

Note that this site is linked to Historic Buildings List item no. 43644, which is a Grade 'A' listed signal box, centred on grid reference NO 1010 3836.

1898 for the Highland Railway (relocated from Inverness to Murthly, 1919). 2-storey, rectangular-plan, timber signal box on brick plinth with plank and strip weatherboard cladding and projecting bracketed porch to S. Ornamental barge boards, spear finials and droppers, and eaves edging. Slate roof. Cast-iron ogee-shaped guttering. Projecting porch similarly detailed. Integral store to N of similar construction with single-pitch roof. 4 windows to trackside with 9-pane glazing to sliding timber frames, curving at frame head; returning to 2 further windows at each gable end (boarded, 2013). INTERIOR: 16 lever Mackenzie and Holland frame.

Signal boxes are a distinctive and increasingly rare building type that make a significant contribution to Scotland's diverse industrial heritage. Of more than 2000 signal boxes built across Scotland by 1948, around 150 currently survive (2013) with all pre-1948 mechanical boxes still in operation on the public network due to become obsolete by 2021. The signal box at Murthly (relocated from Inverness in 1919) is a particularly distinctive variation of the standard McKenzie and Holland Type 3 signal box, modified by the Highland Railway to their own designs. The various refinements to the Type 3 include the addition of ornamental barge boarding, ogee guttering and curved window frames, distinguishing it from the more standard Highland boxes. Four boxes to this specification were built for the line running through Inverness in 1898 with the other three (at Rose Street, Welsh's Bridge and Ness Viaduct) now gone. The porch was formerly accessed by a straight timber forestair to the gable end which has been removed to deter unauthorised access and the windows are boarded (2013). (Historic Scotland)