Mennock Lye Goods Depot

Mennock Lye Goods Depot or Mennock Siding was a railway freight facility located off the A76 in the hamlet of Mennock that lies circa two miles (three km) south-east of Sanquhar, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Situated 68 miles (109 km) from Glasgow it served the industrial and agricultural requirements for transportation in the vicinity of Mennock and the surrounding rural area, originally on behalf of the Glasgow, Dumfries and Carlisle Railway. The goods depot was located on a section of line with a falling southbound gradient of 1 in 160. No passenger railway station has been recorded for Mennock. Although a remote location today the facility would have served freight transport requirements in the form of such items as lime for the fields, cattle, horse and sheep movements, milk delivery, coal transport movements and related items, etc. The Glasgow, Dumfries and Carlisle Railway opened sidings at Mennock for the Leadhills and Wanlockhead mines on 28 October 1850. The lead mines lay about 5 miles (8 km) to the northeast via the steep Mennock Pass. The siding is listed as a public goods station + F for furniture vans and any other road vehicle needing a flat wagon, implying that the siding had an end loading dock. Bill Lockhart was an occasional signalman at the Mennock box as traffic required in the late 1920s and recalled an occasion when lambs to be loaded into cattle trucks from the pens, however they bolted onto the tracks and had to be rounded up by the farmer and his sheep dogs. Thankfully traffic was quiet.