The General Terminus and Glasgow Harbour Railway was authorised on 3 July 1846 and it opened, in part, in December 1848. Its main function was intended to be the transportation of coal from collieries and Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, other railways, to a coal depot on the south bank of the River Clyde. It linked the Polloc and Govan Railway with the Glasgow and Paisley Joint Railway, the Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr Railway, the Glasgow, Barrhead and Kilmarnock Joint Railway and the Clydesdale Junction Railway.