PLANS are underway to honour Glasgow’s war widows at the station where they collected the ravaged bodies of loved ones.

An underground area of Central Station was used as a make-shift morgue during the First World War with women forced to walk through rows of bodies to identify husbands, fathers and sons.

Paul Lyons, who runs sell-out tours at the station,  said plans are underway for a plaque to honour the women, a new mural and war poetry in Scots.

He revealed how the British Army at the time had callously said it was a “waste of resources” to clean up the wounds of the dead before they were identified by relatives. A position they later changed.

The women would pay unemployed men they found loitering upstairs at the station a shilling or two to carry the bodies home.

Mr Lyons said: “Men start and fight wars but it’s the women who are left to pick up the aftermath.

“I’ve waited seven or eight years for this and I’m now to get a plaque to remember the women of Glasgow.

“History doesn’t give them their recognition."

A massive six-month project is also about to get underway to return a derelict Victorian platform to its former glory, complete with a vintage steam engine.

Network Rail is to lay old tracks and sleepers and there will also be a re-created bookstall displaying historic newspapers as well as shop fronts, old-fashioned vending machines and gas-effect lighting.

Old rails which have been replaced on other lines will be laid by Network Rail trainees on the old track bed.

There are also plans to introduce a standalone tour of the roof of Central Station and create an underground museum.

Paul, who has worked at Central for 20 years and is former duty manager of London Euston, recently discovered a wheelchair, dating from around 1917, in a sealed up cupboard.

He said: “Railway stations such as Central, Edinburgh Waverly and King’s Cross in London were used as temporary mortuaries during WW1.

“There would be rows and rows of bodies. Two stretchers are still here.

“The army’s responsibility stopped here. It was your job to come and identify the body.

“The woman had to walk up and down the rows. The army, changed their position of this but at that time said it was waste of resources to clean up the wounds of the dead.

“Of course the women weren’t strong enough to lift the bodies so they paid unemployed men from upstairs a couple of shillings.

“The men who had survived would come off the trains at platform one.

“One woman turned up at platform one every day for two years waiting for her husband until she got the telegram.”