Concourse Roof And Platform Screen Walls, Helensburgh Central Station, Princes Street East, Helensburgh

Helensburgh Central Station's South Side, Platform and Canopy was constructed between 1898 and 1899 by James Carswell, working for the North British Railway Company’s Engineering Department. The station comprises a two-storey, four-bay Renaissance-style office block and a single-storey range of waiting rooms, linked by a partly glazed, barrel-vaulted platform roof, and leading to platforms with panelled screen walls and fine, pitched-roofed canopies. The office block is built of pink sandstone ashlar with a base course, pilaster quoins, and tiered giant pilasters dividing the bays (panelled at ground level). It has architraved windows with stone mullions, dividing and wallhead cornices, a panelled apron band, and a parapet. The rear and single-storey waiting rooms are constructed of brick with sandstone ashlar dressings.

The four-bay elevation of the office block faces East Princes Street (grouped as 2-2) with pedimented outer bays. The left-hand side features a grand entrance with a 2-pane fanlight and bipartite windows, while the centre right has a large timber-mullioned bipartite window, originally with a stone transom and mullion. Regular fenestration is present above. A blank right return elevation has two widely spaced windows above, and a single window to the left at ground floor and a first-floor window to the right. The platform elevation incorporates a series of irregularly placed panelled doors, tall doorways with plate glass fanlights, and windows. The windows throughout are timber sash and case with 6-pane glazing. The building has end and mutual gable stacks, with the right-hand stack truncated. A decorative rainwater hopper is found on the platform elevation.

The ticket office interior retains a grand classical timber entablature above a modern glazed counter, complete with a cornice, bracketed capitals, consoled posts, a broken pediment to centre, and half paterae.

The concourse roof is barrel-vaulted, spanning the inner terminus, with arched ribs springing from the cornices of the flanking offices and waiting rooms. A raised central section with a louvred pitched roof provides ventilation. The ends of the roof are glazed with a screen of arcaded, round-arched, small-pane lights. Platform canopies are supported on decorative cast-iron columns on the track-side. These columns feature panelled, polygonal bases with swagged coping and a fluted band at the foot of the shaft, surmounted by Ionic capitals. The columns support decorative filigreed iron spandrels, which in turn carry the cross beams of the pitched, glazed canopies. The outer sides of the canopies rest on panelled brick screen walls with decorative corbels.

To the right of the principal office block is a vehicular and pedestrian gateway featuring flat arches on metal joists with a brick parapet. This is flanked by pediment-capped piers with decorative wrought- and cast-iron gates that run on wheels. The gateway has a setted road surface with metal tracks.