Links to GB trainspotting logs can now be found at the following address
https://spottinglogs.co.uk/spotting-records-1950s-60s-70s-80s/
My collection of transparencies/prints from unknown photographers includes many from Scotland; a country that (sadly) I never visited until my early 20s. My mother’s holiday requirement for sun, sea and sand in the 50s & 60s did not fit with the unpredictability of the Scottish weather, and I missed all the wonderful branch lines, plus the last years of the ex-LNER pacifics.
By the time I did get that far north, even the Claytons and NBL Type 2s had gone as well.
Here are some steam images just to illustrate part of what I was never destined to see.
Aberdeen station on 19th December 1963. Awaiting departure are 76104, 60851, and a uid B1.
4F 0-6-0 44234 poses when fresh out of Inverurie Works on 11th September 1959. I wonder how long it will remain in this condition. Only 3 more years to go at this point. The loco carries a St Rollox shedplate when the books say it had moved to Grangemouth 65F some months earlier.
A clean Black 5 44794 leaves Gleneagles with an eastbound passenger train on 28th May 1966.
Another Black 5 45472 departs Inverness in July 1955.
46247 ‘City Of Liverpool’ climbs Beattock on 4th June 1960, and seems to be making light work of the gradient with an 8 coach train.
With only 9 months to withdrawal CR 4-4-0 appears to be in good condition as it waits in the sunshine at Dingwall for its next duty. 23rd October 1961.
Climbing past Dundee shed with a fitted van train in September 1965, Peppercorn pacific 60532 ‘Blue Peter’ would give BR another 15 months service until withdrawal at the end of 1966, and then proceed to a much longer life in preservation than the almost 19 years it managed on the national railway.
