Kelvinbank, a Caledonian Railway project.

All the best to you too Dave.

 

What a sight! Pregrouping splendour at its best. 

 

Have a good christmas Dave, I hope you get a chance to enjoy some more moments like that.

Cheers Mikkel and asa, have a good one. 

Merry Christmas Dave!  What a truly splendid pair of locos!

Dave, those low lineside walls are of extra interest to me as I'm trying to justify something similar for a goods yard (I should be using GWR spearpoint fencing but a wall would work much better visually). Were such walls typical on the CR, do you know? 

Interesting question Mikkel.

 

Stone walls were very much a part of the vernacular architecture in the urban areas of the west of scotland. Miles of them were built during the victorian period, not just for the railways but for everything else too. Indeed some go back much earlier. ( Go back far enough even the Romans built one ! ) In the west end of Glasgow many were to enclose estates and as these were sold off as parcels of land for other use the walls were just retained. There is a modern housing estate up at Dawsholm, I think the boundary wall of it is part of the original estate, possibly mid 1700s.

 

Anyway here is a more detailed photo of the boundary wall at the site of Partick Central, the tenements gone to be replaced by modern housing. It is about 5 foot high on the street side.

 

 

 

To give you an idea of the extent of it this not very good photo shows about 2/3 of the length of it. Both photos 2003, most of it is gone now.

 

 

 

They would however have looked very different in Edwardian times when they were much newer. This is a section of retaining wall, originally for the NB. It has been stone cleaned and now has the colours that would have been seen a century ago. That is in bright morning sun, it looks redder in normal daylight.

 

 

 

Outside of the urban areas the CR used timber fencing, so I think its more a case of locality rather than it being a particular CR style.

Many thanks Dave. A good point about the colours darkening over time. Looks like the original setts were also still there at the time when you took the photo, must have been an evocative experience. 

7 hours ago, Dave John said:

Anyway here is a more detailed photo of the boundary wall at the site of Partick Central,

If you look carefully in amongst the weeds, you might even see a Partick Thistle!

 

(I am currently trapped inside a factory producing Christmas cracker jokes. I don’t expect to be rescued...)

Well, towards the left middle of the centre photo is a building, originally a foundry, latterly a scrapyard. The original Partick Thistle football ground was about 800  yards the other side of that. Long gone. 

 

Not that I can be arsed with football. If I wanted to watch dumb animals in a field I would have become a shepherd.....