glasgow central railway station tours

Glasgow Central Tours

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GLASGOW CENTRAL TOURS - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go

Glasgow Central Tours

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Glasgow Central Tours - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

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A-Z of Secret Glasgow: Central Station Tours

Forget Ewan McGregor and the back streets of Auld Reekie.

When it comes to proper trainspotting, there’s only one place to go and that’s Glasgow’s Central Station.

With over 106,000 passing through each day, it’s Scotland’s busiest station.

Now you can book a behind-the-scenes tour that takes you from the clouds to the catacombs.

NEXT:  Visit the site of an old box factory for a proper ale!

Starting under the famous clock – one of Glasgow’s favourite meeting places – the 90 minute tour burrows its way underground to the eerie site of a forgotten Victorian village, passing through rooms that were used as a mortuary during the First World War, as well as an old boiler house that was the site of a 1930’s murder.

Weather permitting, you’ll also get to explore the station’s iconic glass roof.

With 48,000 panes making up 2.2 square miles of glass it is the world’s largest.

The idea for the tours came from Paul Lyons, who has worked on the railways for 18 years. He offered to take people around during the city’s Doors Open Day celebration in 2013 and was staggered to find that 83,500 people had applied for just 100 tickets.

With that sort of interest in train tourism it made sense to schedule regular events and Paul is now the knowledgeable guide telling stories of the famous people who have passed through the station since it first opened its doors 135 years ago. Everyone from Rudolph Hess to John F. Kennedy ….and of course the station’s resident ghosts…

Tours run Fri, Sat and Sun. Tickets cost £10 per person with profits covering staff costs and improvements to the station.

Address: Glasgow Central Station , Gordon St, G1 3SL

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Glasgow Central Station Tours

Glasgow central tours offer you the chance to explore behind the scenes of glasgow's most iconic and busiest landmarks, central station.

About Glasgow Central Station Tours

Glasgow Central railway station is the largest of the two present main-line railway terminals in Glasgow. The station was opened by the Caledonian Railway on 31 July 1879. The station is steeped in history with amazing architecture, incredible underground tunnels, catacombs and has a fantastic glass roof consisting of 48000 individual panes of glass! Come on the Glasgow Central Station Tours see the buildings secret places and hear the voices of the past through stories of workers, famous station travellers and maybe even a ghost story or two... Glasgow Central Station Tours the real Glasgow experience...

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Central station tours reopen with Glasgow School of Art onboard

Much-loved behind-the-scenes tours of Glasgow Central station are about to restart following lockdown and now feature a brand-new underground museum, created in partnership with The Glasgow School of Art.

From today (September 1), visitors are once again able to book tours to be guided through the subterranean passageways beneath Glasgow’s streets, visiting the railway vaults which drove the city’s industrial expansion to become ‘The Second City of The British Empire’, while hearing tales of the famous – and infamous – people who have travelled the tracks and stood on the platforms. During the down time, Jackie Ogilvie, museum curator, has been maintaining the tour’s delicate and valuable assets while painstakingly creating a new museum, with the added support and creativity from the Year 3 students from the GSA’s Interaction Design programme. The station museum is the latest addition to a must-see attraction, with exhibits gathered from old railway buildings, trains, donations from the families of railwaymen and women as well as past visitors to the tour who have been delighted to see their family history on display. The GSA students have created a visual history of the station from construction in 1879, expansion in 1905 through to the present day to create a spectacular showpiece of what’s taken place over the past 142 years, with audio provided by the tick-tock of the famous Glasgow Central clock. The second installation created by Paul Maguire, Programme Leader in the GSA’s School of Design, is a Roll of Honour of Glaswegians lost in the First World War, including their regiment and street address. It’s located in the area of the temporary WW1 mortuary in the depths of the station, where some servicemen will have arrived on their final journey home.

Jackie Ogilvie, Central station tour guide and museum curator, is so excited to finally share even more of the station’s story. She said: “While creating a museum for Central station was a difficult and complicated process, every new artifact and piece of memorabilia provided such an amazing insight into this wonderful place.

“We can’t wait to welcome people back to Central and take them on a wonderful, historical journey, which is only possible due to the kindness and support of so many people for which the station and the railway are such an important part of their lives.”

Paul Maguire, GSA Interaction Design programme leader, said: “I would like to thank Jackie and the team at Central station for the opportunity to work with them on this project. Gaining experience of engaging with clients and developing ‘live’ projects is hugely important to our students and allows them to see their work in a real-world context. The brief was ideal: clearly thematic but open to interpretation – allowing students to explore and experiment with media and meaning. They responded extremely well to the brief, producing a powerful and considered immersive audio-visual installation.

“It was a great privilege to be personally commissioned to develop the ‘Role of Honour’ piece. I found the experience of working with the database to be deeply moving, reinforcing the personal cost of war and reframing it within a city context, referencing familiar Glasgow addresses. I hope viewers feel this same emotional engagement with the work.”

More details and tour booking information for Glasgow Central Tours can be found at www.glasgowcentraltours.co.uk

Why a tour of Glasgow Central Station is a must for Glaswegians and visitors alike

Glasgow Live joined historian Paul Lyons on the 30 minute public tour - and we were blown away by things we never knew about the city's beloved train station.

• 11:36, 3 MAR 2020
• Updated 12:00, 3 MAR 2020

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Central Station opened its ornate gates 140 years ago - and it remains one of the most fascinating buildings in Glasgow today.

The BBC Scotland documentary Inside Central Station captured the attention of the whole country, taking people to the heady heights of those glass ceilings and well below the platforms so many of us pass through daily.

One of the staff members featured in the six part series is Central Station historian and tour guide Paul Lyons, who has organised the station's hugely successful guided tours for the past five years.

And as a special treat, Glasgow Live were taken on a whistle-stop 30 minute wander round the station (the tour normally lasts an hour), which for 140 years has been at the heart of the city.

With over 44,000 visitors in the past five years, the tours have become something of a phenomenon for the city - topping the list of available tours on Tripadvisor since they started.

And it's Paul himself we have to thank for coming with with the idea for them in the first place.

Paul began the tour with an introduction into the history of the station and how, while the original structure remains, it has had to undergo fundamental redevelopment and expansion to meet the needs of the Glasgow public who pass through it on their travels .

A veteran of the rail industry himself, he took particular pleasure in describing the station’s most stunning attribute - its glass panelled roof. There’s more than 48,000 pieces of glass that make up the roof, making it one of the biggest in Europe.

Covering 2.2 square miles, it could take a lifetime to get to know most of the nooks and crannies of Central Station, yet in Paul we have someone who both knows it like the back of his hand and has a keen desire to explore more of it.

Sporting a long grey beard and wearing a bowler hat, he gives off the air of a steampunk Billy Connolly.

And his enthusiasm for the history of the buildings rubs off quickly as he presents his profound knowledge of the building and the stories of those who lived, worked and died in it with a mixture of wit and tragedy.

From the main concourse, we are led down a level to an area away from public view, where there used to be huge grain and coal stores in Victorian times and where a temporary mortuary was constructed in the First World War.

A maze of pathways, cabling and storage and power rooms, the bowels of the gigantic building are hot and have an air of the ‘foostie' about them.

Red banners indicate where the mail was once brought up to put on to the Royal Mail train (which last left the station in 1998), with Paul reminding us of one particular incident that had ties to Central Station - the Great Train Robbery.

Interestingly, the walls of the tour route we take are filled with murals of the old Caledonian Railway Company and the engineers who helped build the station, with the artwork done by students from the Glasgow School of Art back in 2012 prior to the tours starting.

Paul also shows us to an area home to his wonderful collection of finds he has collected over the years, be it gifted to him from people taking the tour or things he has come across while digging about within station.

Items such as an original street map of Grahamston - the village that disappeared with the construction of the station, alongside two headstones believed to be from the old church which once stood within the community.

At that point Paul revealed that he thinks he has stumbled across remnants of one of the old Grahamston streets deep under the station.

Old bottles dating back from the late 18th century are also present, as well as a stretcher and wheelchair from the war era, alongside a fantastic map of the routes that left the station in the 1920s - complete with plenty of long-lost stations.

We are then taken to see where residents would come to collect their items from the trains on horseback in years gone by, at street level with Hope Street,  before we visit the undoubted jewel in the crown of the tour, and a place situated only yards away from the white painted iron surrounds of the walkway to the lower level stations.

A still intact Victorian era platform. Uncovered by Paul after curiosity got him to knock through a wall, it has lain dormant since 1964 and was sealed away and forgotten about for more than half a century.

On entry down into the platform through a nondescript door and down a metal staircase, the fascinating discovery sends chills down the spine. Remarkable given the fact that the lower levels platform trains can be seen a short distance away.

The soot stained brick walls, blackened by the steam trains that once served it, give off an eerie atmosphere. Creating a dark mood only lightened by Paul’s constant humour.

Here Paul tells us of his plans for the future. To bring the old platform back to life, by cleaning up the railway line and placing tracks and sleepers in position, alongside the possibility of a vintage train carriage from the era being shunted into place.

While on the platform itself, he spoke of his desire to install and old Victorian era newspaper stand (featuring newspapers from the era), as well as advertisements from and a ticket booth.

He also notes his desire to clean up the adjacent former ladies waiting room to fully reveal the white tiled walls and ceiling, some of which are still visible today.

And it’s here we end our tour, with tour guide Paul also noting that he would love to allow visitors once again to visit the roof of the station, something that he did when the tours first began back in 2014. The panoramic view of the city, he tells us, is truly breathtaking.

Even in the brief half an hour tour we received, we were bowled over by the insight we received into not only the history of the station, but also the social history of Glasgow.

The tour is a real must for any local or visitor to the city. Let’s hope the tour can expand and make it even better than what it already has proven to be.

Glasgow's history

Article first published on March 3, 2019

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Glasgow , Guided Tours

Unique things to do in glasgow: glasgow central tours.

City tours can often be quite dull – too long, too many numbers and historic details or just not focused on the kind of things you’d like to know about a city. But there is a tour in offer that is totally different from anything I had experienced before: Glasgow Central Tours – and yes, that is Glasgow Central as in the train station.

Before you wonder how obsessed with trains I am to actually recommend you to go and check out a train station in a foreign city, consider this: Glasgow’s Central station has witnessed some key moments in the city’s and Scotland’s history – from both World Wars to the rise and fall of the ship building industry; its roof with 48,000 panes of glass is the largest glass roof in the world; and over 38 million people come and go in this station every year.

This post contains affiliate links from which I may make a commission. Find out more here . All opinions are my own.

Full of superlatives like this Glasgow Central is really rather impressive, both in history and architecture. Always digging for new and unusual things to do in the city I could of course not wait to try this myself, and so I signed up my mum, my boyfriend and me for a tour in early June.

The idea for a behind-the-scenes tour at Glasgow Central station was conceived in 2013 when Paul Lyons, who has been working for the national rail services for almost 20 years now, decided it was time to invite the public on a tour around the station and its roof on the city’s Doors Open Day, a day when random people like you and me get access to buildings and areas around Glasgow that they normally wouldn’t.

With a proud smile on his face Paul tells the story of how there were only a few spots available for this tour, but hundreds and thousands of applications by people who wanted to experience the station in this new way.

He knew he was onto something. Fast forward to 2016 and Paul has been running the official Glasgow Central Tours for several years now and there is no end in sight. Anybody can now book one of four daily tours which lasts around 90 minutes and costs £13 per head.

Once those exact same heads are well-protected by a safety helmet, the tour into the heart of the station begins.

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The tour is as much about the train station as it is about the history of the city of Glasgow. Paul tells stories about the transformation of the building, from the earliest station built here in 1879 through various phases of modernisation and expansion.

But what really seems to be close to Paul’s heart is to tell the stories of the people who frequented the station, and in particular the soldiers leaving Scotland by train for WW1 and their wifes welcoming them back home years later, or having to identify their bodies when they fell.

‘I’ll have you all greet by the end of the tour’ , and in Scotland of course ‘greet’ means ‘cry’ – Paul seems pretty confident about that. And indeed it is hard to hold back the tears when he brings to life the stories of war widows and survivors found in the national archives and tells stories of men who changed or died in war, and women who had to pick up the shambles at home and find a way to bring home the bodies of their loved ones.

Paul plans to commission some artists with artwork evolving around these stories to raise awareness of the effects and consequences the wars have had on the women of Glasgow.

As the tour goes on, we descend further and further down into the depths of Glasgow Central. Stories of ghosts and haunted tunnels, stories of murder and crime, stories of horses and rats – as someone of Tripadvisor writes about the tour: Paul should indeed be a TV historian.

He is such a passionate storyteller and tour guide that by the end of the tour – at the old Victorian platform that he wants to renovate in the near future, nobody wants to go back up to real life. If only the tour could go on for longer.

The good thing about this is that all the money earned with the tours goes right back into new projects at Glasgow Central. Paul really loves the station and its history, and so he convinced national rail services to invest back into the renovation of even more sections of the old train station. He will also start to offer tours to the station’s roof again soon. With every satisfied tour participant, his leverage to do so grows and I hope that I can contribute to the development of this project with my voice here.

Book your tour online at Glasgow Central Tours’ website .

This leaves only one thing to say: if you come to visit Glasgow and want to have a unique and unusual experience with one of the city’s loveliest and most impressive people, Glasgow Central Tours with Paul Lyon will definitely make your day!

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8 thoughts on “ Unique things to do in Glasgow: Glasgow Central Tours ”

Just back from this fantastic tour. Was fascinated and transported by guide Paul who was filled with obvious passion for the station history. Highly recommend this trip.

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What a brilliant idea! I have lived in Glasgow my whole life and have never heard of this tour, but it sounds great and I’m definitely going to give it a try!

It’s really great – Glasgow has such a rich history 😀

Amazing! Such great idea. Thanks for sharing! Can’t wait to be back in Glasgow and do it.

I was so surprised by the tour – it’s incredible how much you can fit into 1.5h when you’ve got a passion for the stories you’re telling! Hope you’ll get to experience it for yourself soon 🙂 Thanks for your comment!

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Glasgow Central Tours

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Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Glasgow Central Tours - Things You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

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