Tail Lamp – readers’ letters

Sir: Although Steam Days did publish a most excellent article by Andrew Wilson on ‘Scottish Directors’ in August 2009, it is the equally pleasing October 2020 piece – Steam Days in Colour: The last years of the Robinson ‘D11/1’ ‘Improved Directors’ (and perhaps lockdown) which has prompted me to put pen to paper. As a very young lad in the late 1950s, I saw all the ‘Scottish Directors’ and vividly recall arriving from Edinburgh at Glasgow (Queen Street) Low Level to find Wizard of the Moor at the head of our train. Ticking off the last one, The Fiery Cross, proved difficult, but eventually on a wet day trip with ‘Scottish Railfans’ I found No 62686 in store at Arbroath shed, along with three other members of the ‘D11’ class. I was still as school in the autumn of 1961 when I spotted ‘K2’ No 61764 Loch Arkaig on the scrap line at Eastfield shed in Glasgow, awaiting entry to Cowlairs Works for breaking. With little thought as to how I might pay for it out of my five shillings per week pocket money, I composed a letter to British Railways Scottish Region at St Enoch station in the centre of Glasgow, asking whether I could purchase a Loch Arkaig nameplate. The reply from Mr H Cheetham informed that these were ‘already bespoken for’ but my name would be added to the list and should any further plates become available I would be given the opportunity to purchase. I thought little more about the matter until, arriving home from school a month or so later, I found a maroon Scammell three-wheel truck at our door and the driver holding something long, wrapped in sacking. My mother paid over 17 shillings and the mechanical horse left. When the sacking was removed I found myself looking at Ellen Douglas, something of an old friend, having seen this ‘D11’ many times on visits to Eastfield shed in Glasgow. Fresh from breaking at the old Great North of Scotland Railway works in Inverurie, Ellen Douglas as a painted name, was in remarkably good condition. This was apparently due to the fact that fairly soon after a heavy overhaul in mid-1955 (also at Inverurie) the locomotive was placed in covered storage at Crianlarich shed on the West Highland line. Although closed by the LNER in 1930 the shed still stands to this day. The photograph in Andrew Wilson’s 2009 article illustrates the locomotive’s sparkling condition at that time. The ‘UK Shed Bash’ website records Ellen Douglas at Crianlarich from August 1957 to July 1961. Classmate No 62675 Colonel Gardiner was also stored there in August 1957 and I would really like to source a photograph of that period at Crianlarich if any reader can help. Over the next 34 years I moved home, to Dundee, Edinburgh and St Andrews, destinations with which Ellen Douglas would have been very familiar. The nameplate travelled with me but in 1995 to help finance an historic racing car project I rather foolishly sold it to a railwayana dealer and thereafter felt that I had lost part of my childhood. Fast forward 23 years to 2018 and a railwayana auction in Stockport. There I was successful in re-purchasing my old friend, albeit in rather poorer order than in my first term as custodian. In places the image of a pervious painting was beginning to re-appear. It’s called ‘patina’ these days. However, after a little conservation the 1924-painted nameplate is now mounted on a 200-year-old section of burr oak from Lanrick Mead in the Trossachs. For those unfamiliar with Lanrick Mead, the connection is Sir Walter Scott’s poem ‘The Lady of the Lake’, the lake being Loch Katrine and the lady … Ellen Douglas. No 62688 did of course have the name painted on both splashers and over the decades I have often wondered whether the other side also survived. Archive photographs of the dismantling yard at Inverurie suggest this is possible. One picture shows the neatly removed Glenfinnan alongside the remains of No 62467, and Glen Mamie (or Glen Mallie) can be seen attached to the workers’ store in the background. More ‘Scottish Directors’ were cut up in west of Scotland breakers yards and thus it is doubtful that many names escaped the torch, but it would be nice to think that one or two more of Sir Walter Scott’s wonderfully evocative names, whether ‘Directors’, ‘Scotts’ or ‘Glens’ were rescued. So, if you are out there Luckie Mucklebackit, Laird of Balmawhapple, Wizard of the Moor and especially Ellen Douglas (the other side), we would love to hear from you! If any Steam Days reader has information I would be happy to hear from them – via the Editor – and share the good news (with appropriate permissions of course).

Iain Wright, Kirklee, Glasgow