ABANDONED PLACES: Glencoe station: Off the rails
Doors stolen, windows gone. A bit further down and yet another faded sign with the words Station Restaurant and Ba
Glencoe and Dundee are inextricably coupled, the former established on the arrival of the railway line in 1889 to transport coal from the Dundee mines.
The proper name was Biggarsberg Junction (after the local mountain range) but that changed later to Glencoe when Scottish settlers renamed it after a lookalike valley in Argyleshire, Scotland.
With the railway line came businesses, the earliest trading store and the Glencoe Hotel (today a home for seniors run by the Aryan Benevolent Society) both owned by FJ Payne whose farmhouse was to become a Russian hospital during the Anglo-Boer War.
It was once a buzzing hive of comings and goings – trains – passenger and goods – arriving, departing, shunting at what was once the second (or third?) largest junction in the country after Germiston. One could almost imagine people trundling their suitcases on the footbridge that joins the parking lot to the middle island where the main station is located. Army boys with their trommels. Mums waving a tearful goodbye. Families going away on school holiday trips. People arriving. Joyous reunions on the platform…
ABANDONED PLACES: Where did DNC’s greens go to?
ABANDONED PLACES: Glencoe – still the green, green grass of …
Now, the footbridge groans under one’s feet. The rust is everywhere. Vast lines of steel have also rusted away…. with piles of litter mounting up against the railway lines. Even the once proud Glencoe station sign looks forlorn. The other sign – announcing that Glencoe is also the junction to Piet Retief – is almost obliterated by rust. Then to the offices… that once probably were full of people… these have been stripped. Attempts have also been made to hack out two safes in the walls.
Doors stolen, windows gone. A bit further down and yet another faded sign with the words Station Restaurant and Bar. Peter Jones remembers ordering everything from a cup of coffee, to a three-course meal and even a Lion Lager. This huge complex would make a wonderful movie set. Amazingly, there is no security to be seen at the premises that have been left to rot. Kaartjies asseblief…
