St Combs, LNER ‘Push-Pull’, and Balerno coaching stock

Sir: Feedback will be welcome on my St Combs article – February 2021, Steam Days – as will anyone who can cast more of a light on the Eastern Region examples of push/pull operations I gave mention to, which are a bit sketchy, unlike those operated by LMS/LMR or GWR/WR, which are well enough documented.

Mention also of noteworthy and, by appearance, antique coaching stock on services into BR days concerns a series of 4-wheeled coaches built in 1920/21 by the Caledonian Railway to replace, almost on a like-for-like basis, vehicles dating from the 1880s that were necessary to operate the Edinburgh suburban service to Balerno that followed the meandering course of the Water of Leith such was the curvature of the track. The service was withdrawn from November 1943 (one of those World War II closures that came about) but the stock would appear to have been moved to another suburban branch from Princes Street station to Barnton in the north of the city that was not bedevilled by curvature problems to my knowledge.

H C Casserley (who else?) photographed a working thereat in October 1946 and a grainy photo in Trains Illustrated for December 1950 purports to show a service departing Princes Street for Balerno, which as a destination is clearly wrong and should be Barnton. This service itself ceased in May 1951 and sources I have read state that all the remaining

4-wheelers were officially withdrawn in the following May, 1952. The douce citizens in a part of Scotland’s capital city therefore had the pleasure (?) of travelling in stock that had ceased, apart from a few odd examples, elsewhere by these moments in time. Not given much prominence it appears!

John Macnab (by email)