St. Enoch Subway Station, Glasgow
A unique and charmingly fanciful building, once headquarters of the Glasgow Subway.
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St. Enoch Square, Glasgow G1 4BW
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The Glasgow Subway, opened on 14 December 1896, is the third-oldest underground metro system in the world after the London Underground and the Budapest Metro.
In 1890, the Glasgow District Subway Company was successful in it's application to build & operate a 10.5 km (6.5 miles) circular underground railway around the western, central and southern boundaries of the City of Glasgow. It opened with the unusual track gauge of 1.22m (4 ft) and ran a fleet of cable-hauled, very small trains, propelled by a winding engine in Scotland Street and serving fifteen stations dotted in a rough circle around the city.
The first trains consisted of thirty cable gripper cars, built by the Oldbury Railway Carriage & Wagon Company. Twenty four four-wheeled trailer cars, built by the Hurst Nelson Company, were added in 1898, but these gave a poor ride and fourteen were subsequently rebuilt to become full length trailer cars. There were no points anywhere on the system or railed access to the surface depot at Broomloan Road Govan. For maintenance the cars were lifted from the tunnels by a crane within the depot building, via an access pit.
The company's head office was in St Enoch Square, the station building housing both a booking office and the headquarters of the original Glasgow District Subway Railway Company. This is the Subway's most distinctive building - an ornate, Jacobean, late Victorian red sandstone structure designed by James Miller in 1896. It has domed turrets, fanciful gables and finials, an oriel window, and a red tiled roof. It is in pleasant contrast with the St. Enoch Centre in the same square.
It was carefully preserved during the modernisation of the Subway in 1977, even being jacked up in the air for a while, during reconstruction of the sub-surface platforms. The building was used by SPT as a travel information centre from 1980 until these facilities were moved to the underground ticket hall in 2008. The building now houses a coffee shop.
By road: Off A814, Clyde Street, on St. Enoch Square near Central Station.
By rail: The building is close to Glasgow Central Station.
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