page_title: Kilmarnock and Troon Railway
section_title: Opening and operation
hierarchical_section_title: Kilmarnock and Troon Railway / Opening and operation
caption_attribution_description: English: ROute of the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway, Scotland
context_page_description: The Kilmarnock and Troon Railway was an early railway line in Ayrshire, Scotland. It was constructed to bring coal from pits around Kilmarnock to coastal shipping at Troon Harbour, and passengers were carried.
  It opened in 1812, and was the first railway in Scotland to obtain an authorising Act of Parliament; it was also the first railway in Scotland to use a steam locomotive; the first to carry passengers; and the River Irvine bridge, Laigh Milton Viaduct, is the earliest railway viaduct in Scotland. It was a plateway, using L-shaped iron plates as rails, to carry wagons with flangeless wheels.
  In 1841, when more modern railways had developed throughout the West of Scotland, the line was converted from a plateway to a railway and realigned in places. The line became part of the Glasgow and South Western Railway system. Much of the original route is part of the present-day Kilmarnock to Barassie railway line, although the extremities of the original line have been lost.
context_section_description: The line was opened on 6 July 1812. The construction process had taken four years, and cost £59,849, a 52% overspend.
  The line operated as a toll road, so that independent carriers could place wagons on it, and pay for the facility. If a horse and cart could travel on it, so could the proprietors' cattle: "No person [shall] be allowed to drive cattle along the Railway ... excepting the proprietors, the members of the Committee of management, and the officers of the Company."
  The American observer Strickland, writing in 1826, noted an obvious problem of a horse plateway:
  The attendant and horse paths are four feet in width, and are raised or made up to a level with the top of the flange. From this mode of construction, the flat part of the rail is frequently filled with dirt and gravel; so much so, as to be little better than a common hard road. Horses only are used as the propelling power, and they convey thirteen wagons in convoy, each containing about one ton, at the rate of two and a half miles per hour. This reduced speed is occasioned principally by the great friction caused by the broad construction of the rails, and the wheels of the wagons come in contact, which is constantly thrown off from the horse path. Besides the rail wagons, common carts are introduced upon the rails; which has a very injurious effect, arising from the roughness of the tire of their wheels, and from the soil which adheres to them being deposited on the flat part of the rails.
  Notwithstanding any shortcomings, the railway paid a dividend of 5% in 1817, and paid the same or better every year except 1858 and 1859 for the rest of the century. The Company was bought out by the Glasgow and South Western Railway in 1899.
  The Edinburgh Encyclopædia said, in 1832,
  The only public railway of extent in Scotland, is that between the manufacturing town of Kilmarnock and the harbour of Troon; which, agreeably to act of Parliament, is open to all on payment of a certain toll.
caption: Kilmarnock and Troon Railway route