Former Station and Station House, Greenloaning

Former Station and Station House, Greenloaning

This three-bay, single-storey and attic building was constructed in 1848 for the Scottish Central Railway as a combined station and station master's house. The structure is T-shaped in plan and built of coursed rusticated sandstone with ashlar detailing, crowstepped gables and a steeply pitched slate roof with graded slates and leaded ridges. It stands adjacent to the railway line with an early twentieth-century glazed and timber waiting area facing the former platform to the south.

The main western elevation is symmetrical, featuring paired windows flanking a moulded and corniced doorway. A semi-circular fanlight was inserted into the originally blank relieving arch after 2005. The north and south elevations are gabled with crowsteps and skewputts, each containing an attic window. The south elevation, facing the railway, has two ground floor windows with a moulded entablature above a clock. The east elevation is abutted by a two-bay single-storey station block, with a timber and glazed lean-to waiting room to its south.

Openings throughout the building have chamfered reveals and cills. Windows are largely twelve-pane replacement uPVC sashes, though six-paned fixed timber glazing remains in the former passenger waiting area. All external doors are later replacements. A truncated, shouldered ashlar chimneystack with no pots stands on the station block.

The interior retains significant later nineteenth and early twentieth-century fabric, particularly in the former station house. This includes moulded cornices, window and door architraves, and panelled timber shutters and doors, one of which retains early painted signage reading "Ladies Room". The former ticket office preserves a timber ticket desk and service hatch, along with a painted stone fire surround decorated with Art Nouveau tiles. Alterations to layout and fabric occurred during the later twentieth century to convert the building for domestic use, including new internal openings connecting the house and station, and sixties and seventies extensions with cement rendered walls lined as stonework and a red-brick store. These later extensions are excluded from the listing.

The Scottish Central Railway Company, formed in 1845, built the station as one of ten intermediate stations linking Perth and Stirling to Central Scotland. The line formally opened on 15 May 1848 but did not begin passenger services until 15 June, as many intermediate stations remained incomplete. Originally the station employed one stationmaster, one booking clerk, two porters and one pointsman, increasing to twenty-three personnel in shifts as traffic grew.

In 1865 the Scottish Central Railway amalgamated with the Caledonian Railway, connecting Perth and central Scotland with the English network. Early maps and historic photographs document the building's evolution. A postcard from around 1900 shows the presence of three chimneystacks; the two on the station master's house were removed in the late twentieth century, as was the height reduction of that on the station block. The same postcard and a 1965 photograph show earlier double-pitched timber ancillary buildings immediately east of the station, later replaced by the present rear additions. The original covered waiting area was replaced or filled in during the mid-twentieth century by the current mono-pitched glazed timber version. A footbridge linking the platforms was constructed by the early twentieth century and removed by the early nineteen-seventies, as was a large timber goods shed.

Greenloaning Station closed in 1956 with many other intermediate stations on the route, though the line remains in use. The building was converted to domestic use in the late nineteen-fifties and occupied privately until 2019 when acquired by Network Rail. Later ancillary buildings to the northeast, west and east, including a timber hut built of reclaimed railway sleepers, are excluded from the listing.