Constructed in 1849 by the
Caledonian Railway Company as its main terminus for the city, the original station buildings consisted of supposedly temporary wooden structures, which lasted until the 1930s. A goods station at the site opened in 1850. Services ran primarily northbound, to
Aberdeen,
Perth and
Stirling and other destinations. The station was earmarked for closure and replacement in the "
Bruce Report", which made proposals for the redevelopment of Glasgow after the
Second World War. The plan included replacing Buchanan Street and Queen Street stations with a Glasgow North station on land including the site of Buchanan Street, but many times larger. There was also a similar scheme to replace Central and St Enoch stations with a Glasgow South station, but neither came to fruition. This reprieve proved to be temporary, as the station was closed in 1966 as part of the
"Beeching Axe" devised by
Richard Beeching. The station largely duplicated the function of the more centrally located Queen Street in serving the northern inter-city routes from Glasgow, while the latter also held the advantage of serving the
northern electric suburban network as well as having a near-direct interchange with the
Glasgow Subway. By contrast, Buchanan Street, with its distant location from the city centre in Cowcaddens, and being located halfway between
Cowcaddens and
Buchanan Street had no easy or convenient Subway interchange. In addition, the
slum clearances of the 1960s in the immediate area had taken away much of the resident population that the station served. The decision was therefore taken by
British Railways to move all of the station's services to Queen Street, despite its smaller physical size and capacity constraints. In 1966, as the station was being wound down, British Rail constructed a massive 8-storey 'L'-shaped office block known as "Buchanan House" on part of the station site to house its
Scottish Region headquarters - it was later renamed "ScotRail House" in 1984 to reflect the new
ScotRail branding of the Scottish Region. After the
privatisation of the railways in the mid 1990s, the building remained the Scottish HQ for the rail infrastructure company
Railtrack and its successor
Network Rail until 2003. The closure of the station formed part of a wider programme of regeneration instigated by
Glasgow Corporation, who had already earmarked the site for the construction of a new technology college. The removal of the station would allow for a realignment of Cowcaddens Road along with adjacent North Hanover Street and
Parliamentary Road to a giant "superblock" into which a new civic square would be created - this was essentially the embryonic version of what would evolve into
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, although this was eventually built farther to the south, and the resulting land used for a new bus station instead. The station buildings were demolished in 1967, and were eventually replaced by the Glasgow headquarters of the
British Transport Police in 1980 which stands directly over the former booking office site. A multi-storey car park and
Buchanan Bus Station were built to the south of the station in 1977. The railway lands and goods sidings to the immediate north of the station were given over to the construction of the new Glasgow College of Technology (now
Glasgow Caledonian University) in 1971. The Buchanan Street tunnel that ran from just outside the station to just beyond the Cowlairs Incline at
Sighthill (where the lines merge with those emanating from the Queen Street tunnel) still exists, although the route was severed due to the construction of the M8 motorway at the turn of the 1970s, and the two ends are therefore no longer connected together. The south portal can still be found located behind the campus of Glasgow Caledonian University and Buchanan House, but it is now sealed off and all access is prohibited. ==The site today==