Wick railway station

Wick Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Ùige[1]
158701 standing at Wick
General information
Location	Wick, Highland Scotland
Coordinates	58°26′30″N 3°05′51″W / 58.4416°N 3.0975°W / 58.4416; -3.0975
Grid reference	ND360509
Managed by	ScotRail
Platforms	1
Other information
Station code	WCK[2]
History
Opened	28 July 1874; 150 years ago (1874-07-28)[3]
Original company	Sutherland and Caithness Railway
Pre-grouping	Highland Railway
Post-grouping	LMS
Passengers
2019/20	16,664
2020/21	3,442
2021/22	12,980
2022/23	14,924
2023/24	16,726
Listed Building – Category B
Designated	28 November 1984 (amended 15 December 1998)
Reference no.	LB42321[4]
Notes Passenger statistics from the Office of Rail and Road

Wick railway station is a railway station located in Wick, in the Highland council area in the far north of Scotland. It serves the town of Wick and other surrounding areas in the historic county of Caithness, including Staxigoe, Papigoe and Haster. The station is the terminus of the Far North Line, 161 miles 36 chains (259.8 kilometres) from Inverness.^[5] It is managed by ScotRail, who operate all trains serving the station.

The station was designed by Murdoch Paterson and built by the Sutherland and Caithness Railway, opening the line in 1874.^[3][6] A wrought-iron turntable, 45 feet (14 m) in diameter, was installed at the station by the Railway Steel and Plant Company of Manchester,^[7] along with an engine shed capable of housing four engines and a special loading bank for the loading of herring for the southern markets.

On 1 July 1903, the Wick and Lybster Light Railway was opened, and Wick became a junction station.^[8] The last trains to Lybster ran in 1944, although the line was not officially closed until 1951.

Until 2000, trains from Inverness would split in half at Georgemas Junction, with one portion going to Wick and the other to Thurso. This practice ended when Class 158s were introduced on the line – since then all services run in full between Inverness and Wick via Thurso, in both directions, adding up to 30 minutes to journey times to and from Wick.^[9]

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip visited the station in 2002, as part of a tour for Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee.^[10]

On 30 June 1909, Peter Doull, a coal trimmer, was killed by a train in the coal siding.^[11]

On 3 May 1941, a goods train pulling into the station collided with an empty carriage at the platform. The buffers failed to stop the carriage, which carried forward and piled up onto the platform, where one end crashed into the Menzies bookstall. The platform buffers were found buried beneath the wreckage of the bookstall.^[12]

The station lies adjacent to Caithness General Hospital and Wick police station; it is also the nearest station to Wick Airport (about 1.1 miles (1.8 km) to the north) and to the village of John o' Groats (approximately 17 miles (27 km) to the north) at the northeastern tip of mainland Britain.

The station has a single platform, which is long enough to accommodate a ten-carriage train.^[13] The station is fully wheelchair-accessible, but it is not monitored by CCTV.^[14]

The station has a ticket office, staffed between 10:10 and 17:15 every day except Sundays. There are no self-service ticket machines or smartcard top-up facilities, although there are smartcard validators. Other facilities include: a free car park with 12 parking spaces, a sheltered bike stand with 10 spaces, a payphone that accepts both cash and card, waiting rooms with designated seating areas, toilets (only open during staffing hours) and a post box.^[14]

There is no bus stop located directly outside the station.^[14]

On weekdays and Saturdays Wick station receives four trains per day in each direction, to and from Inverness (via Thurso, Helmsdale, Golspie, Lairg, Tain and Dingwall). On Sundays this drops to just one train per day each way.^[9]

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Georgemas Junction		ScotRail Far North Line		Terminus
	Historical railways
Bilbster Line open, station closed		Highland Railway Sutherland and Caithness Railway		Terminus
	Disused railways
Thrumster Line and station closed		Highland Railway Wick and Lybster Railway		Terminus

On 19 August 2017, Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe, presenters of the documentary series All the Stations, completed their 14-week journey at Wick, having started at Penzance^[15] on 7 May 2017. That marked the end of their successful project to visit all 2,563 railway stations in Great Britain.^[16]

• Brailsford, Martyn, ed. (December 2017) [1987]. Railway Track Diagrams 1: Scotland & Isle of Man (6th ed.). Frome: Trackmaps. ISBN 978-0-9549866-9-8.
• Vallance, H.A. (December 1966). "The Northern Highland Lines Today, Part two: Inverness to Wick viewed from the cab of a type "2"". Railway Magazine. Vol. 112, no. 788. pp. 681–685.
• Butt, R. V. J. (October 1995). The Directory of Railway Stations: details every public and private passenger station, halt, platform and stopping place, past and present (1st ed.). Sparkford: Patrick Stephens Ltd. ISBN 978-1-85260-508-7. OCLC 60251199. OL 11956311M.
• Jowett, Alan (March 1989). Jowett's Railway Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland: From Pre-Grouping to the Present Day (1st ed.). Sparkford: Patrick Stephens Ltd. ISBN 978-1-85260-086-0. OCLC 22311137.
• Jowett, Alan (2000). Jowett's Nationalised Railway Atlas (1st ed.). Penryn, Cornwall: Atlantic Transport Publishers. ISBN 978-0-906899-99-1. OCLC 228266687.
• ScotRail North Highlands Timetable

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wick railway station.

• Train times and station information for Wick railway station from National Rail