The world now stops at Whifflet

its socks. Like the man with the red flag who preceded the Rocket, it

seemed an idea to get there ahead of the rush.

Alighting (that lovely railway word) at Whifflet could be a new treat

for the new year, if less than a mainline one. Even for the most

intrepid voyagers it could be also a daunting expedition. Not everybody

in the wider world knows where or what is Whifflet.

Whatever or wherever, it sounds a suitable place to receive trains.

Whifflet looks right for a station name. It will fit destination boards

as well as would Wormit, another wanderer off railway maps.

As at Whifflet, trains do not stand for Wormit. They rush on by with

their noses in the air. They are only for waving to.

Whifflet is not otherwise like Wormit, or anywhere much else in the

whole universe. It is one of the old industrial villages -- along with

Whifflet went Gartsherrie, Sunnyside, Langloan -- that lumped together

to make the metropolitan area of Coatbridge.

Whifflet people turn shy when asked to explain their place's name. Not

much expecting to be believed, they say it started as wheat flat,

indicating idyllic roots of level fields of golden grain. A plainer

guess is possible. In the way that a droplet is a small blob, Whifflet,

though tiny, suggested smelly.

Its hard-working history is part of the raw Southside story of

Coatbridge, once the Iron Burgh. Whifflet dug the coal for the 'Brig's

foundry fires. For a main social amenity Whifflet had wished on it the

area's poorhouse. It got the fever hospital. Into Whifflet were put the

services other people wanted put out of mind.

Even Government inspectors in l9l4 were taken aback by how people were

expected to live. In rows of hovels, owned by the bosses, ''the sanitary

conveniences were in a state of revolting filth,'' they reported.

Whifflet declined to let itself go. It had a public park with a

bandstand. A library opened. Playing bowls became an expert obsession.

As in the rest of Coatbridge, an aspiring skyline was made stately by

chapels and kirks built like young cathedrals. And whatever else

Whifflet went without, it never ran short of trains.

North Lanarkshire had railway lines as it now has double yellows.

Welcoming its new station, Whifflet will not wilt with the heady

novelty of it all. It has been there before. Once it had three stations.

Monday's opening is a giant stride forward to about 30 years back.

Above bare platforms has been erected an orange footbridge complex

enough for the film set of a Busby Berkeley dance number. Although the

townscape is much enlivened, wanderers to Whifflet may be looking for

more.

They should know that the station's hinterland nurtured the boyhood

dreams of Albion Rovers, the big football team of central Coatbridge.

Since nothing much in Whifflet is what it used to be, their former

Meadow Park has been turned into an electricity sub-station.

To football, as to everything else, there was a railway connection.

Robin Marwick, a director of the club and its historian, has uncovered

that even the nursery field of the Rovers was railway property. While

one goalmouth's landlord was the old Caledonian, the other end of the

park lay in the fiefdom of the North British.

''If the wind blew the wrong way when a steam train ran by during a

game, they had to stop the football because of the smoke,'' Robin

Marwick insisted. When teams travelled by train, football was more fun.

Confronted by a triple choice of stations, Whifflet's heroes sometimes

left from the wrong one. Or when they took the train they meant to take,

the boot hamper went on another. According to Robin Marwick, at one away

game in distant Rutherglen they played one man short when the goalie

left early because he had a train to catch. (The Rovers won just the

same.)

When they returned from any big (if occasional) triumph, the start of

the celebrations was invariably the same. Always the Coatbridge Brass

Band played the gladiators home from the station door. Old Whifflet

would have been a lost place without its trains.

Its brightest hidden gem, however, may be the former picture house.

With the district's enthusiasm for recycling, it now fronts a

confectionery factory. Whifflet Picture House was notable for how it had

a ramp, not stairs, to the balcony where it provided double seats for

winching couples. For forgotten reasons patrons called their

pleasuredome the Garden. Robin Marwick did not think much of the guess

that the nickname had to do with those top-shelf Adam and Eve chairs.

To romantic voyagers who collect railway stations a cinema that became

a sweetie works and was called the Garden for reasons that local people

won't tell should be enough of a travel attraction for going on with.

Who knows what further wonders of Whifflet Monday's new gateway will

open on to.