In pictures: St Enoch, Glasgow’s lost station

FOR more than a century it was a Glasgow landmark that dominated the skyline of Scotland’s largest city.

The main entrance to St Enoch station in March 1963. Rail services ceased in 1966 and the hotel was demolished in 1977.

St Enoch railway station opened in May 1876 and the adjoining red sandstone-clad hotel welcomed its first guests three years later.

The terminus had 12 platforms, covered by two distinctive arched roofs modelled on St Pancras station in London.

Passengers could travel to southern Scottish towns such as Kilmarnock, Dunfries and Stranraer but also to suburban stations in the Gorbals and the southside of the city.

A demonstration of British Railways' new car sleeper service at St Enoch station in 1958

There was also a direct service to St Pancras via Carlisle.

Standing in St Enoch Square, the station was built just a few hundred yards from the larger Glasgow Central - and it was this proximity that would eventually lead to its closure in 1966.

Designed by Thomas Wilson for the City of Glasgow Union Railway Company, St Enoch was acquired along with the hotel by the Glasgow & South Western Railway Co in 1883.

In an era of network rationalisation in the 1960s, it was no surprise that St Enoch was one of the stations to close, with its services switched to nearby Central.

Passengers rush to St Enoch underground station in August 1962. The railway station was on the left.

But the decision not to preserve the imposing St Enoch Hotel - the largest railway hotel in the city with 200 rooms - was met with anger.

“One wonders when the orgy of destruction of all that is architecturally noble and attractive in Glasgow is going to stop,” wrote one angry resident to a local newspaper, protesting against the hotel’s planned demolition.

The British Rail-owned site was handed to the govenrment-owned Scottish Development Agency, which insisted it was required for a new office development housing Ministry of Defence civil servants.

Fearing the loss of much-needed new jobs in the city, the local authority reluctantly backed the decision to demolish - but the civil servants would never arrive.

The gap site created was eventually filled by the St Enoch shopping centre, which opened in 1989.