Longridge railway station (Scotland)

Longridge Eastern Station
Old railway bridge just east of the 1850 station.
General information
Location	Longridge, West Lothian Scotland
Coordinates	55°50′05″N 3°40′23″W / 55.834861°N 3.673048°W / 55.834861; -3.673048
Grid reference	NS 953 661
Platforms	1
Other information
Status	Disused
History
Original company	Wilsontown, Morningside and Coltness Railway
Pre-grouping	Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway
Key dates
2 June 1845[1]	Opened
April 1848[1]	Closed to passengers and freight
May 1850[1]	Re-opened in a slightly different location
December 1852[1]	Closed to passengers

Longridge railway station^[1] was the original terminus of the Wilsontown, Morningside and Coltness Railway (WM&CR) that served the nearby village of Longridge in West Lothian and it was also referred to as Eastern station and was 8 miles 50 chains (13.9 km) from Morningside station.^[2]

The first station opened as the then terminus of the line at Longridge in 1845 and was then closed in 1848.^[1] The railway was extended to Bathgate on a different alignment that diverted the route to the north where a new station (55.833977, -3.673023), a simple platform, was opened in May 1850 but closed in December 1852.^[1]

The W,M&CR at first adopted the standard track gauge for mineral lines of 4 ft 6 in (1,372 mm), often referred to as Scotch gauge. The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway took over the W,M&CR in 1849, the track gauge already having been changed in August 1847, from the now almost obsolete Scotch gauge to the generally accepted standard gauge of 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm).^[3]

This made Longridge one of the few purely Scotch gauge stations to have existed as it closed before the gauge was converted.

The later Longridge station of 1850 had a single short platform that was accessed off the A706 Longridge to Breich road and stood just to the west of the railway overbridge.^[4]