Kilmarnock to Troon Railway
It was the first railway in Scotland for which an Act of
Parliament was required. This was because the line crossed lands
that were owned by various people. The railway came about because
when William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, Marquis of Titchfield, the
son and heir of the third Duke of Portland, married Henrietta, the
daughter of Major General John Scott of Fife, he acquired, through
her, lands around Kilmarnock which were rich in coal. Although he
did what he could to develop his estates, the transport of coal to
the coast was a major problem. The roads were either dusty tracks
or muddy pathways, depending on the weather. At the time, the
logical alternative to using the bad roads was to build a canal. A
two mile canal had been built at Saltcoats and the idea for a
Kilmarnock Canal gained ground. The plan was to build it from the
River Irvine near Glencairn Square to the new harbour then being
built at Troon for the Duke of
Portland, before it was abandoned in favour of the more
ambitious idea of a railway.
The required act of Parliament was passed in May 1808, and
work started soon after. The cost was estimated at £38,000. The
horse drawn railway (or plateway which would be more technically
correct), was built to standards quite different from those today.
The gauge was four feet while today it is four feet eight and a
half inches. Two tracks were laid and there were frequent places
where one vehicle could pull across to the other track to allow a
faster horse to pass. The metal rails, most of which were made
either at Glenbuck or at the Kilmarnock Foundry, were three feet
long weighed 40 pounds each. They were not laid on wooden sleepers,
instead they were placed on stone blocks, 9-12 inches thick. The
ground on which the stone blocks were laid was beaten solid. The
railway was not easy to build, it crossed soft ground at Shewalton
and a bridge had to be built over the River Irvine not far from
Gatehead. This four arched stone bridge (the Laigh Milton Viaduct),
although no longer used, is now thought to be the world's oldest
railway viaduct. In 1812 the railway was open for business and
although it was intended to be used only for coal and minerals, a
passenger service was started on June 27, 1812, just before the
line was completed. It was one of the first regular railway
passenger services in the world.
A few years after the line was opened it was the scene of
the first test in Scotland of a steam locomotive which put the
Kilmarnock and Troon railway at the very forefront of the railway
revolution. Very little is known about the engine itself. It was
bought by the Duke of Portland for £750 and he named it 'The Duke',
after himself and it arrived in
Kilmarnock sometime between 1816 and 1818. A letter
dated March 25, 1813, to the Duke of Portland from William Jessop,
the engineer who did much of the work on the railway, relates to
the specifications of a steam locomotive which would be needed for
use on the line. It is also almost certain that 'The Duke' was
built by George Stevenson in 1816. It used patents, just registered
by Stephenson and William Losh. It was the first 0-6-0 locomotive
to be built anywhere and it was also the first that Stephenson ever
built for a customer, all his previous ones being built for the
Killingworth Colliery. The engine was said to have been too
advanced for the primitive track, thumping on the cast iron plates
causing considerable damage and forcing the need for frequent
repairs. In 1821, the company considered a complaint from a local
farmer whose land bordered the railway. He complained that cinders
from the locomotive had caused a fire in his field. It was the
first complaint of its kind in Scotland. Eventually the Duke was
retired, and around 1838, Scotland's first locomotive was sold for
scrap metal.