History
The station was built by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, and opened on 18 February 1842. In 1865 the E&GR was absorbed into the North British Railway, which became part of the LNER group in 1923.
The climb through the tunnel to Cowlairs is at 1 in 42 and until 1909 trains were hauled up on a rope operated by a stationary engine, although experiments were carried out using banking engines in 1844-48. In 1945 there was a minor railway accident when a train leaving the station slipped to a standstill and rolled back into another train. Modern diesel trains have no difficulty with the climb.
The adjacent Buchanan Street station of the rival Caledonian Railway closed on 7 November 1966 as a result of the Beeching axe and its services to Stirling, Perth, Inverness, Dundee and Aberdeen transferred to Queen Street. This caused difficulties with longer trains, as Queen Street is in a confined position between George Square and the tunnel.
In the 1980s, HST were used on Cross Country and East Coast services, having to use Platform 7 with the end of the train being close to the tunnel mouth.
Currently (2011), trains are usually of two to six coaches, running more frequently.
Read more about this topic: Glasgow Queen Street Railway Station
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