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Alloa Station Junction

Forty years ago and earlier this photograph could have been taken from the booking office of Alloa railway station. In fact the camera was balanced on the parapet of Erskine Street bridge, which is now closed to vehicles but retained for pedestrians. Until October 1968 (and for a decade or so afterwards until their total demolition) the platforms of Alloa railway station passed under the bridge and passengers would have descended stairs from the booking office to the platform. The present railway station at Alloa, opened in May 2008, is just beyond the bridge in the distance on the newly re-laid line from Stirling to Kincardine. The green dip to the left, with a partly flooded footpath disappearing round it, was the course of the Devon Valley railway to Dollar and Kinross, which lost its passenger services in 1964. The bridge and embankment with steps coming down from it, mark the course of the Earl of Mar's waggonway, opened in 1766 and used until 1924, from coal pits in the Sauchie area down to Alloa Harbour. Today its route through the town is maintained as a footpath. Forty years ago as well, the site of the flat-roofed apartments behind the brown fence was occupied by a locomotive depot and where the Asda supermarket is now was a lager brewery.