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The Hillhead Railway

by Roger Griffith 24 June

One of the more unusual railways in the Beith district was the narrow gauge Hillhead Railway, that once ran from the Hillhead Limestone Quarries at Broadstone, down to the standard gauge (4 feet 8 1/2 inches) railway near Brackenhills Station on the old line from Giffen Junction to Kilbirnie.

The Hillhead Railway is shown on the Ordnance Survey (OS) map of 1856, but not on the 1897 edition. This Hillhead Railway ran for several miles across what is now DM Beith land and ended up at an unloading point where the limestone was emptied directly into standard gauge freight waggons.

Hillhead Quarry was part of the Broadstone Limestone Works and the original Broadstone Farm was entirely lost to the limestone workings. Hillhead Farm was renamed Broadstone, a farm that still exists. Little remains of the railway apart from a shallow cutting running down from near West Broadstone, and the overbridge near the old South Windyhouse Farm on the Barrmill Road.


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