Ayr railway station serves the town of Ayr in South Ayrshire, Scotland. It is situated in Smith Street, off Burns Statue Square. The station, which is managed by Abellio ScotRail, is on the Ayrshire Coast Line, 41.5 miles (66.8 km) south-west of Glasgow Central.

The station was opened on 12 January 1886 by the Glasgow and South Western Railway. This was the third station to be named 'Ayr' in the town: the original station, located on the former Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway, opened in 1839. When the Ayr and Dalmellington Railway was opened in 1856, a station called Ayr Townhead was opened on the south side of the town. When the original Ayr station was closed on 1 July 1857.

Townhead station was renamed 'Ayr', however this second station closed the same day the current station opened, the current station was built just 300 yards (270 m) south of the previous station.

The Glasgow and South Western Railway became part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway during the Grouping of 1923, passing on to the Scottish Region of British Railways during the nationalisation of 1948, when sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s, the station was served by ScotRail until the privatisation of British Rail.

Ayr station consists of two through platforms, and two bay platforms to the north, the northbound platform station building is located on the ground floor of the four-storey hotel attached to the station, and the southbound platform has a large single storey sandstone building, the glazed canopy that covers a small section of all four platforms and the waiting area was originally much larger than its current size.
 
The station has one of eight remaining ticket offices on the Ayr to Glasgow Central line, the others being Prestwick Town, Troon, Irvine, Kilwinning, Johnstone, Paisley Gilmour Street and Glasgow Central. In December 2006, the station received automatic ticket barriers as part of ScotRail's revenue protection policy

Ayr used to have an Intercity twice-daily London Euston service (one daytime and one sleeping car train) which ran to/from Stranraer via Barassie to the Glasgow South Western Line, which ceased in the early 1990s. In the 1980s the Royal Scot started from Ayr. Following completion of the electrification of the Ayrshire Coast Line the train operated in push-pull mode with Class 87 or Class 90. In the early 1990s with the restructuring of British Rail the train ceased to start from Ayr.

The Ayr to Glasgow service is one of the busiest on the rail network in Scotland and can suffer from serious overcrowding at peak times. To alleviate this, in June 2005 ScotRail extended the length of trains departing Ayr between 0643 and 1813 on weekdays to six cars wherever possible. Between 2002 and 2011 the Glasgow - Ayr route were served by Class 334s and 1986-2011 Class 318s.

Killoch Branch
Killoch was developed in the late 1950’s and commissioned as a deep shaft coal mining and processing facility in 1960, operating for over three decades till 1987.
Killoch is located 10 miles from Ayr on the west coast of Scotland and 5 miles from Cumnock in East Ayrshire. The village of Ochiltree is located 1.5 miles with the principal A70 road running in parallel. The A70 connects Ayr to the M74 at Douglas in South Lanarkshire and was engineered for the heavy traffic seen in the height of coal mining in the region. An electrical substation sits behind Killoch which was designed to drive the winding towers which transported miners into the Killoch pit. A railhead is closely located, currently in use and transporting stockpiled coal to destinations in Scotland.

Benbane Branch.
(Name cited as DUNASKIN CENTRAL WASHER).
Location: Waterside
Previous Owners: Bairds & Dalmellington Limited
Opened: 1941
Year Closed: 1988
Other Details: A coal preparation plant, complete with slurry defloculation plant, built by the Coppee Company (Great Britain) Limited, described in Iron and Coal Trades Review, 25 April 1941. An associated brickworks was built nearby in the disused buildings of the Iron Works, operating until 1976, and subsequently preserved to form part of the Dunaskin Heritage Centre.

Waterside is a small village situated between Dalmellington and Patna
about 20 miles south-east from Ayr in the heart of Burns country. The
village was built to house the workers of the nearby Dalmellington Iron
Works, founded in 1847 at Dunaskin. The remains of the iron works which
were later converted to brick works, form the core of the Dunaskin open air
industrial museum. The valley of the River Doon has been the cradle of a
burgeoning industrial development in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Coal and iron mines in close proximity were linked by
an extensive system of railway lines which carried the raw materials to the
blast furnaces of Dunaskin.
After the demise of the last coal pit at Penny venie, open cast mining
was instituted at Benbain and from 1988 at Chalmerston. The output from
Benbain was taken by lorry to the Dunaskin washer before being distributed
by rail. The closure of the Benbain site in July 1986, sounded the death
knell of Dunaskin's industrial usage and all industrial activity at the site
ceased; the coal from Chalmerston going to the more modern .washery at
Killoch Colliery

Station and Sidings lengths in Chains

Prestwick                       12
Newton-on-Ayr					12
Ayr Platform 4					20
Ayr Platform 3					20
Ary Platform 2					12
Ayr Platform 1					12
Maybole							16

Down Goods						30
No 1 Up Loop					20
No 2 Up Loop					15
No 1 Reception					25
No 2 Reception					26

Washing Plant					15
Washing Plant Spur				20
By Pass Loop					15
Carriage Sidings Spur			20

Timing Points

Falkland Jcn
Newton Jcn
Dalrymple Jcn

Abbreviations in timetable notes:

'd'   Dalrymple Jcn
'D'   Dn Goods Loop
'f'   Falkland Jcn
'n'   Newton Jcn
'R'   Reception
'W'   Washing Plant

The start up screen photo was taken by my self (David Palmer) in 2019, it is Ayr station with a Stranraer train to Glasgow Central.

Acknowledgements

This simulation was developed by David Palmer & Richard Wade, with the use of PC-Rail developoment software supplied by John Dennis.
Thanks to the PC-Rail testing team for all there help. 
