The station was designed by Murdoch Paterson and built by the Sutherland and Caithness Railway, opening the line in 1874.[3][6] A wrought-iron turntable, 45 feet (14 m) in diameter, was installed at the station by the Railway Steel and Plant Company of Manchester,[7] along with an engine shed capable of housing four engines and a special loading bank for the loading of herring for the southern markets.
On 1 July 1903, the Wick and Lybster Light Railway was opened, and Wick became a junction station.[8] The last trains to Lybster ran in 1944, although the line was not officially closed until 1951.
Until 2000, trains from Inverness would split in half at Georgemas Junction, with one portion going to Wick and the other to Thurso. This practice ended when Class 158s were introduced on the line – since then all services run in full between Inverness and Wick via Thurso, in both directions, adding up to 30 minutes to journey times to and from Wick.[9]
On 30 June 1909, Peter Doull, a coal trimmer, was killed by a train in the coal siding.[11]
On 3 May 1941, a goods train pulling into the station collided with an empty carriage at the platform. The buffers failed to stop the carriage, which carried forward and piled up onto the platform, where one end crashed into the Menzies bookstall. The platform buffers were found buried beneath the wreckage of the bookstall.[12]
The station has a single platform, which is long enough to accommodate a ten-carriage train.[13] The station is fully wheelchair-accessible, but it is not monitored by CCTV.[14]
The station has a ticket office, staffed between 10:10 and 17:15 every day except Sundays. There are no self-service ticket machines or smartcard top-up facilities, although there are smartcard validators. Other facilities include: a free car park with 12 parking spaces, a sheltered bike stand with 10 spaces, a payphone that accepts both cash and card, waiting rooms with designated seating areas, toilets (only open during staffing hours) and a post box.[14]
There is no bus stop located directly outside the station.[14]
Services
On weekdays and Saturdays Wick station receives four trains per day in each direction, to and from Inverness (via Thurso, Helmsdale, Golspie, Lairg, Tain and Dingwall). On Sundays this drops to just one train per day each way.[9]
^Bridge, Mike, ed. (2017). TRACKatlas of Mainland Britain: A Comprehensive Geographic Atlas Showing the Rail Network of Great Britain (3rd ed.). Sheffield: Platform 5 Publishing Ltd. p. 104. ISBN978-1909431-26-3.
Brailsford, Martyn, ed. (December 2017) [1987]. Railway Track Diagrams 1: Scotland & Isle of Man (6th ed.). Frome: Trackmaps. ISBN978-0-9549866-9-8.
Vallance, H.A. (December 1966). "The Northern Highland Lines Today, Part two: Inverness to Wick viewed from the cab of a type "2"". Railway Magazine. Vol. 112, no. 788. pp. 681–685.
Jowett, Alan (March 1989). Jowett's Railway Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland: From Pre-Grouping to the Present Day (1st ed.). Sparkford: Patrick Stephens Ltd. ISBN978-1-85260-086-0. OCLC22311137.
Jowett, Alan (2000). Jowett's Nationalised Railway Atlas (1st ed.). Penryn, Cornwall: Atlantic Transport Publishers. ISBN978-0-906899-99-1. OCLC228266687.
