Description
In May 1967, just fifteen months before the end of steam on British Railways, the Scottish Region bid farewell to its last steam locomotives. It was one of the last bastions of pre-grouping engines, with some ex-North British Railway veterans soldiering on until the very end. While some of these machines had served their successive owners for more than seven decades, the BR Standard locomotives that were introduced after nationalisation were prematurely withdrawn with many years of useful service left in them. Plugging the age gap between those two generations of locomotives were those of the former LMSR and LNER.
In this volume, focusing mostly on Scotland’s central belt and south west, you will see industrial 0-4-0 saddle tanks and streamlined ‘Pacifics’; ten-coupled freight locomotives from the 1950s and 0-6-0 goods engines from the 1890s as they eke out their final years in steam north of the border. More than thirty different types of steam locomotive will be found within these pages.
The railway landscapes of Central Scotland range from industrial Glasgow to rolling countryside, dramatic bridges and coastal villages. The superb, evocative Les MacDowall photographic archive holds images of long-scrapped locomotives at long-gone Scottish stations, sheds and lineside locations from Ayrshire to Fife, and Dumfries to Perth. His wonderful photographs record the gradual demise of steam north of the border from about 1963 until the bitter end.
