Scottish Steam 1948-1967
By Peter Tuffrey (hardback, Great Northern Books, 160pp, £19.99, ISBN 978-1-914227-21-9).
FOR southern-based 1950s trainspotters, Scottish steam was as elusive as passing the O Level exams (no gentle let-downs with grades then, literally the brutality of simply pass or fail) or Essex winning the county cricket championship, writes Geoff Courtney.
Across the border in the land of caber tossing, riding the bounds, bagpipes, and ceilidhs were steam locomotives never to be underlined in our Combined Volumes. Former GWR engines allocated to faraway Welsh sheds could perhaps be seen at Swindon Works, while Eastern, London Midland, Southern, and even North Eastern region representatives weren’t generally an insurmountable challenge.
Scottish locomotives were, however, different altogether, with the exceptions of a Haymarket (64B) Class A4 on ‘The Elizabethan’ into King’s Cross or the rarity of a Polmadie (66A) Princess Coronation on a visit to Euston. That didn’t stop us wishin’ and hopin’, as Dusty Springfield was to sing in 1964, but now we can at least pictorially savour what we were missing, thanks to this latest combination between Peter Tuffrey and Great Northern Books, their 19th joint venture.
Last month I reviewed another Great Northern publication, The Glorious Years of the LNER, and Peter has followed the style of that book by compiling each of the 250 black-and-white and colour photographs in the alphabetical order of where they were taken. Unsurprisingly, each starts at Aberdeen, but whereas the LNER book ends at York, Peter’s journey’s end is at Wick.
One of the mystiques of the Scottish railway scene to steam era teenage trainspotters was some of the names of the locomotive depots or their sub-sheds. Boat of Garten, for example – how much more intriguing than the names back home. Burntisland. Kipps. Yoker. Anstruther. Ballachulish. Readers of this new book can at least get a pictorial indication of two of those locations, Ballachulish and Kipps. The former has Class 2P 0-4-4T No 55263 at the station with a Connel Ferry train in 1957, and on Kipps shed (65E) there is the delightful sight of 1891-built Y9 class 0-4-0ST No. 68110, complete with wooden tender, in October 1961.
More familiar locations range from Aberdeen to Stirling, and Edinburgh and Glasgow to Inverness and Perth. Familiar too are some of the classes, including LMS, LNER, and Standard Pacifics, but one of the joys of the book is also the unheralded motive power that so often evaded the photographers’ lenses.
Class Z5 0-4-2T No. 68192, for example, shunting in August 1950 at Aberdeen docks, Class 0F 0-4-0ST No. 56025, which was to be in service for 70 years, at St Rollox Works in Glasgow in late 1948 with ‘British Railways’ applied in large letters on its saddle tanks, or J36 class 0-6-0 No. 65234, another Victorian veteran numerically between Nos. 65233 Plumer and 65235 Gough but not graced with a name itself, in the unphotogenic but undeniably compelling setting of Riddochhill Colliery in West Lothian in August 1964.
Motive power depots large and small, busy city stations and rural outposts, locomotives of all sizes and eras from thoroughbreds to workhorses, and even scrapyard scenes all combine to remind north of the border enthusiasts how it used to be, and those of us south of the border what we missed.