The End of Steam on Scotland's Railways (TTP)

£14.95

In May 1967, 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 working until the very end. Whilst some of these machines had served their successive owners for more than seven decades, the BR Standard locomotives that were introduced after nationalisation were withdrawn with many years of useful service still left in them. Filling the gap between these two generations of locomotives were engines of the former LMSR and LNER.

In The End of Steam on Scotland’s Railways, Colin Alexander has compiled a selection of J L MacDowall’s images which focus mainly on Scotland’s central belt and south west, featuring 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 wait to be found within these pages.

The railway landscapes of Central Scotland range from industrial Glasgow to rolling countryside, dramatic bridges and coastal villages. Part of the Transport Treasury collection, the Les MacDowall photographic archive holds superb, evocative 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.

155 black & white photographs. 104 pages.