Ticket Barriers were once commonplace on Scottish Railway Stations, and allowed station staff to check the tickets of passengers prior to boarding of trains, and thus helped speed up boarding and keep fare-evasion under control. Gradually ticket barriers became redundant, and those pictured at Aberdeen were removed in the mid 1980s.

This photograph shows the barriers leading to platforms 3 & 4 at the south end of Aberdeen Station in 1981. The building on the right was for the lifts to the parcels and luggage bridges, which allowed large items to be conveyed easily to the through platforms. The bridges (similar to the passenger footbridge linking platforms 5,6,7,8 & 9) went out of use during the 1980s and the buildings seen here were demolished. However, the footbridges themselves survive, as does the lift tower on the abandoned platform 9.