Tamdhu Distillery Visitor's Centre, Knockando Station

The Tamdhu Distillery Visitor's Centre incorporates the former Knockando Station, including its ticket office and waiting room, built in 1896-9, and a signal box dating from 1899. The station buildings are an interesting and rare survivor located on a long-disused section of the Great North of Scotland Railway line between Grantown (East) and Craigellachie. Originally named Dalbeallie, the station was renamed Knockando after local residents raised funds to construct a road linking the village to the railway. The buildings have been sensitively restored as part of the visitor centre.

The station building is a single-storey, weatherboarded structure with contrasting margins. It has long north (entrance) and south (platform) elevations, with lower, flat-roofed, single-bay extensions at the east and west gables, also weatherboarded. The north elevation features two doors and irregular window placement. The south elevation has five bays, with the central three bays recessed and containing a panelled centre door; the windows are tripartite. All windows have decorative glazing to the upper lights. The building has a piended slate roof with bracketted eaves, a decorative red tile ridge, and apex finials.

The signal box, built by the Great North of Scotland Railway Company, is a small, weatherboarded structure with a small lean-to porch at the east gable, approached by a short flight of wooden steps. It features a five-light glazed frontage and a rear stack of polychromatic brickwork. The roof is piended with red ridge tiles. Internally, the signal box contains a seven-lever frame.

The Great North of Scotland Railway operated between Ballater and Elgin, extending to Fraserburgh. Signal boxes are a distinctive and increasingly rare building type contributing to Scotland's industrial heritage; of over 2000 built by 1948, approximately 150 survive in 2013. The Knockando signal box is a small, well-detailed example of a Great North of Scotland Railway Type 3 box, distinguished by its polychromatic brick chimney and the survival of its original lever frame. Fewer than ten of the more than 150 signal boxes constructed by this company are known to survive.