Qualla: Cullen Viaduct

Cullen Viaduct: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas Cullen, CC BY-SA 3.0. The most striking thing about Cullen is what isn't there. The Great North of Scotland Railway wanted to run a line through low ground to the south of the town, the way any rational engineer would lay it. The Seafield Estate said no. So the railway went up. Eight tall stone arches now stride across the seaside burgh, leaping the Burn of Cullen and the main road and the rooftops, a piece of late-Victorian infrastructure built not for speed but for trespass - the trespass it was forbidden to commit on the ground.

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Image: Lucas Cullen | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cullen Viaduct: The Refusal

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anne Burgess, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the 1880s the Great North of Scotland Railway was extending its line along the Moray coast between Portsoy in Aberdeenshire and Elgin. The natural route ran through the policies of Seafield Estate, immediately south of Cullen. The estate, then one of the most powerful landed i...

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Image: Anne Burgess | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cullen Viaduct: Eight Arches Over a Burgh

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Hodgson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The main viaduct contains eight arches and crosses both the Burn of Cullen and the A98 trunk road. A separate four-arch bridge handles the line where it descends to Seafield Street at the foot of the town, with vehicles and pedestrians passing beneath. The masonry is the buff-gre...

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Image: Alan Hodgson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cullen Viaduct: After the Trains

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Markus Trienke, CC BY-SA 2.0. The line itself is long gone. British Railways closed the coastal route through Cullen as part of the Beeching cuts in 1968, and the rails were lifted soon after. What survived was the viaduct, sturdier than the operation it had served. The arches found a second life as part of t...

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Image: Markus Trienke | CC BY-SA 2.0