Back Track
Many large cities have suburban rail services, indeed many could not function satisfactorily without them as can be seen when industrial action closes them down temporarily. Some used to have such services but now no longer have them as a result of bus competition which can be rather more easily diverted to wherever there is a perceived need. Some places like Manchester have managed to salvage their remaining suburban services and incorporate them into tram systems while others now wish their rail systems had not been decimated. Bristol falls into that category and there are, somewhat slow moving, plans to reinstate some of them as a Metro.
One city where its suburban services were withdrawn at a stroke before World War II as a result of their inability to match the ever growing bus competition is Aberdeen. Even though infrastructure work was undertaken in 2019 to permit a greater frequency to the north of the city, there is little likelihood of them ever being reinstated as a whole since the formation to the west of the city was cleared in the 1960s. The coming of the ‘Subbies’ (as they were known) was dependent on the completion of a through route between the railways which lay to the north and the south of the city.
Early days
The Aberdeen Railway, later absorbed into the Scottish North Eastern (SNER), came in from the south to a terminus at Guild Street near the innermost end of the Harbour. The Deeside Railway was opened westwards from Aberdeen Ferryhill as far as Banchory on 7th September 1853 and was leased by the Great North of Scotland Railway (GNoS) from 13th May 1862. The GNoS had already built a separate terminus at Waterloo towards the east of the Harbour and, although this and Guild Street were only some 700 yards apart, there was no linking railway between them. This was not strictly true for both had connections to the quayside lines of the Aberdeen Harbour Trustees although there were no through workings between the two, the Harbour Rails being horse worked and intended to serve the loading and unloading of shipping.
It was soon realised by both companies that there had to be a more efficient way of transferring traffic from north to
