THERE are few railway stations which endear themselves to the public so much that people write songs about them.

There is the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset, but the one almost all Glaswegians have heard is Billy Connolly's jaunty Last Train to Glasgow Central, and its rule-breaking tip on how to escape ticket purchase. Billy's ode to Glasgow Central was simply reflecting the city's fond relationship with the cavernous station.

Like all relationships there can be rocky patches, such as when trains are cancelled. But a station also holds memories of meetings and departures; couples meeting for their first date at "The Shell", the hollowed out gun-shell, or under the giant four-faced clock in the middle, or tear-flowing farewells as parents see off children departing to lives elsewhere. Or the cheerfulness of bow-tied businessmen staggering to the train home after a tipsy dinner, or the Scotland fans en route to Mount Florida and the roller-coaster emotions of supporting the national team.

Last week though I was looking down on the people scurrying across Central Station, quite literally. The station has now started behind-the-scenes tours, taking you up to the narrow catwalks on the glass roof and down into the vast brick-vaulted world below the concourse with its ghosts, smells and boarded-up platforms.

You need a guide though to bring the station's stories alive, and Central Station has that in Paul Lyons, a long-time railway employee who, with his spade-shaped beard, looks like the younger, more sharply-dressed, brother of playwright John Byrne. First though, the roof. Over two square miles of glass, some 48,000 panes, a breath-taking view of the city skyline and trains running below you looking just like a giant child's railway set. You wear hard hats for this bit, and you can't take your mobile phones out for pictures in case you drop them on to the roof. The small print for the tour says you shouldn't be drunk, which sounds a particularly Glasgow type of small print.

The glass roof, possibly the largest in the world or maybe only the largest in Europe - tricky things these statistics - was painted black during the war so that German pilots trying to navigate down the Clyde couldn't spot it. Years of coal-burning engines added to the grime, but then in the eighties millions of pounds were spent replacing the panes and letting the light flood back in.

Our guide Paul once chased a miscreant who robbed a nearby shop across the roof. Scary stuff. It should have been the work of the police, but as Paul explains: "There were two officers who followed me up, but they looked more like two PC Murdochs from the Oor Wullie cartoon, so they didn't exactly keep up."

Then down through locked staircases to the chambers below where in Victorian times horse-drawn carriages would come in, and grain delivered by train would pour through sluice gates on the platforms down to the waiting carts. And there were rats. Big ones, feeding off the grain and leaving their own excrement which was shovelled on board the carts along with the grain, causing the many diseases which led to the soaring infant mortality in Victorian times. There are still the brass rings on the walls where ponies were tied up.

The original station, opened by the Caledonian Railway company in 1879, had only eight platforms which came right up to Gordon Street, causing traffic chaos. It was the company's engineer Donald Matheson who redesigned the station, adding more platforms and adding the vast concourse to allow the large numbers of passengers. Pause and observe the concourse buildings. Many have rounded edges to allow for an easier flow of crowds.

"One of the biggest crowds," says Paul, "was the 40,000 who turned up to see Laurel and Hardy who had been staying at the Central Hotel. As they waved goodbye on their train one Glasgow guy ran up and shouted at Oliver Hardy that he wanted to shake his hand. Hardy duly obliged, then discovered that his gold watch had been nicked."

Paul is now getting in his stride and tells of John F Kennedy's visit to the station, and of Roy Rodgers and his horse Trigger at the hotel. He faithfully recounts that teetotal Roy complained of a cold and was offered a local medicine - a quarter bottle of Whyte and Mackay. Unsteady in the saddle that night in the Glasgow Empire, he fired his six-gun in the wrong direction, Trigger got scared, Roy fell off, Trigger lost control of his bowels over Roy, and the curtain was hurriedly pulled down.

Well I think we can file that tale under apocryphal. Good story though.

Not that the tour is all laughs. We stop at a section underneath that was a temporary mortuary during the First World War where devastated families would come to identify the bodies of their sons and fathers only weeks after cheering them off to war. Paul explains: "Years later the stretchers they came in were still stored here. I tried to give them to museums but they already had so many," and he shakes his head at the folly of war.

But what about the village of Grahamston which was buried beneath the station? Rumour has it that there are still ghostly streets and shops underneath the platforms. Not true I'm afraid. The Victorians were good at demolishing buildings as well as building them.

As the tour party passes out of a door back on to the concourse an old fellow passing asks if I had been down at the hidden village. I told him I had. I'm getting like tour guide Paul. Why spoil a good story?