Green light given for John Cameron’s Fife farm museum

LOCOMOTIVE owner John Cameron’s plans to move his LNER A4 and K4 to his Fife farm for static display were back on the cards when his planning application for converting an agricultural storage building into a museum was finally approved by Fife Council on October 14.

Since 2017, John has been seeking permission to convert a building on his farm to home his two out-of-ticket locomotives – LNER A4 No. 60009 Dominion of Canada and K4 No. 61994 The Great Marquess – for display.

His plan was initially rejected in 2018, with Fife Council stating that the “proposed development would create an unacceptable development in the countryside and would result in the loss of prime agricultural land” and that the design submitted was “not in keeping with the surrounding countryside”.

The approved plans will see no new building erected; instead, a new partition wall will be built to divide the interior of one of Cameron’s pre-existing barns, enabling the two locomotives and an LNER observation carriage to be housed while still retaining storage space for agricultural need. The new museum space will become part of the Balbuthie Open Farm Visitor Centre.

The A4 has been displayed in Bury Transport Museum on the East Lancashire Railway since its boiler certificate expired in October 2021, with the K4, meanwhile, having spent the last five years at the Bo’ness & Kinneil Railway but not been operational since 2016. It is intended that as part of the museum set-up, footplate access will be made available to both locomotives.

No date for their relocation had been announced as this edition went to press.

John bought Lochty Farm and No. 60009 in 1966 and the following year purchased track from the National Coal Board to lay what became the Lochty Private Railway, which he operated until closure in 1992. He is also former chairman of ScotRail and a BR Board member from 1990-1996 and president of the Gresley Society.

In May 2005, South West Trains named its Class 121 driver training railcar John Cameron.