Aviemore Station

Aviemore Station is a railway station complex built in 1892 by the Highland Railway Company and restored in 1997-98 by Law & Dunbar-Nasmith. It comprises a range of buildings on the down platform and a smaller but similar range on an island platform, linked by a footbridge, with projecting awnings and a separate canopy range.

The offices and waiting rooms on the down platform form a long single-storey structure with painted weatherboarding and a brick base course, with contrasting painted window reveals. An off-centre square porch with flanking 2-sided canted windows projects onto the west approach forecourt and main road. The east elevation is sheltered by a long gabled canopy supported by cast-iron columns with decorative brackets featuring snowflake-detailed spandrels. The wooden barge boards have a decorative carved valance, and the south gablehead features gothic traceried painted arch lights. Large 2- and 3-light windows occupy both elevations, with 3- and 6-pane lower lights and multi-pane upper lights. The building has rubble ridge stacks with ashlar copes and slate roofs.

The island platform range is a single-storey 7-bay building with offices and waiting rooms, also finished in painted weatherboarding with contrasting painted window reveals. A projecting canopy encircles the building on all sides, supported by similar brackets to the down platform but with replacement columns made from re-used and painted lengths of railway line. The fenestration is similar to the down platform range. This building also has rubble ridge and end coped stacks and slate roofs, with decorative cast-iron rainwater downpipes and fixtures.

A cast-iron footbridge by the Highland Railway Company spans the line, linking the down and centre island platforms at the south. It features a trellis balustrade. Picket fences enclose the perimeter and run between platforms.

Aviemore Station is a rare and outstanding example of late 19th-century timber railway station construction with no equal in the Highlands. The platform buildings are finely detailed, particularly on their trackside elevations, and retain numerous original features. The curving timber and cast-iron awning with pierced timber valances is equally notable and was sensitively restored at the end of the 20th century. The station originally opened in 1863 with buildings by the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway, before being rebuilt in 1892 by the Highland Railway Company. The cast-iron footbridge with trellis balustrade contributes to the group value of the station. The intervisible timber signal box at the station (listed separately) is the largest surviving example of the archtypal Highland Type 3 box by McKenzie and Holland, installed shortly after the station's rebuilding in 1892, its timber weatherboarded construction matching the platform buildings.