Wick To Lybster Light Railway, Ulbster Station

ND34SW 268 31869 40733

Highland Railway; Lybster branch (formerly Wick and Lybster Light Railway). Opened 1 July 1903; station closed 1 April 1944.

H A Vallance 1985.

This intermediate station on the Wick-Lybster branch line of the former Highland Rly was opened (by the Wick and Lybster Light Rly) on 1 July 1903. It closed to regular passenger traffic on 1 April 1944, the line remaining open until 1 December 1951.

Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 6 April 2000.

R V J Butt 1995.

The remains of Ulbster Station are situated in what is now a field of pasture; the Station Master's house (ND 31870 40735), immediately to the ENE, is now a private residence and was not visited during the course of the 2004 RCAHMS survey.

The station stood on the Wick - Lybster branch of the former Highland Railway and was opened in July 1903, subsequently closing to passenger traffic in April 1944, and to goods traffic in December 1951. There was only one platform, which stood on the SE side of the single line and the opposite side of the track was formed by the grass-grown batter of a cutting over 3m in depth. The platform, which measures 69m in length and is ramped at both ends, is fronted by a mortared stone wall 0.7m in height. The copes that formed the edge of the platform have been removed, and the building that once stood on the platform has been reduced to its foundations. The NE end of the building measures 6.55m from NE to SW by 3.7m transversely overall and the thick iron pins projecting from the top of the foundation wall at ground-level once secured a timber superstructure. The interior is now open and measures about 0.5m in depth, but there was once a timber floor supported on dwarf walls in a cruciform arrangement. The SW end of the building stood on a concrete raft, which measures some 3m in length. The building measures about 9.55m in overall length, and this corresponds with the depiction of the unroofed building on the 1996 Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map (sheet ND 3140).

In addition to the single line that fronted the platform, there was a siding to the SE, terminating in a goods loading area immediately SW of the platform building. Here, the siding now appears as a simple cutting, but its edges were probably originally revetted. To the SW the siding is shown on the 2nd edition of the OS 6-inch map (Caithness 1907, sheet xxix) as a short switch-back, and appears to have been little more than a waiting/storage area for wagons. Like the rest of the track bed, it is now grass-grown.

(YARROWS04 013)

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS), 13 May 2004.