Island Platform, Aviemore Station

Island Platform, Aviemore Station

Aviemore Station comprises a rare and outstanding example of late 19th-century timber railway station construction with no equal in the Highlands. The complex was originally built in 1863 by the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway, but the platform buildings were rebuilt in 1892 by the Highland Railway Company and sensitively restored in 1997–98 by Law & Dunbar-Nasmith.

The station consists of a range of buildings on the down platform and a smaller but similar range on the island platform, linked by a cast-iron footbridge. Both platform ranges are connected by projecting awnings with a separate canopy range.

Down Platform Range

The offices and waiting rooms form a long single-storey painted weather-boarded range with contrasting painted window reveals and a brick base course. An off-centre square porch with flanking two-sided canted windows opens onto the western approach forecourt and main road.

The eastern elevation is sheltered by a long gabled canopy supported by cast-iron columns with decorative brackets featuring snowflake-detailed spandrels. The wooden barge boards carry decorative carved valances, and the southern gablehead is pierced by gothic traceried painted arch lights. Large two- and three-light windows appear in both elevations, with three- and six-pane lower lights and multi-pane upper lights. The building has rubble ridge stacks with ashlar copes and slate roofs.

Island Platform Range

This single-storey seven-bay building also comprises offices and waiting rooms in painted weather boarding with contrasting painted window reveals. A projecting canopy encircles the building on all sides, supported by similar decorative brackets to those on the down platform, though with replacement columns made from re-used and painted lengths of rail line. The fenestration matches that of the down platform range. The building features rubble ridge and end coped stacks, slate roofs, and decorative cast-iron rainwater downpipes and fixtures.

Footbridge and Associated Structures

A cast-iron footbridge by the Highland Railway Company with trellis balustrade spans the line, linking the down and centre island platforms at the southern end. Picket fences enclose the perimeter and divide the spaces between platforms.

The finely detailed platform buildings are particularly notable for their trackside elevations, retaining numerous original features. The curving timber and cast-iron awnings with pierced timber valances are equally noteworthy. The timber signal box at the station, a separate listed building, is the largest surviving example of the archtypal Highland Type 3 box by McKenzie and Holland. Installed shortly after the station was rebuilt in 1892, its timber weather-boarded construction is in keeping with the intervisible buildings on the station platform.