Fife Coal Company

[Caledonian]

The Wemyss Coal Company and Wemyss Private Railway locomotives, stock and liveries are well recorded, but I'm trying to find more about the Fife Coal Company next door.

 

I presume that before they were nationalised they relied on Wee Barclays and there's a throwaway reference in Brotchie's book on the WPR to a blue livery. There are also the red liveried wagons which Hornby did for Harburn Hobbies, but beyond that googling Fife Coal Company and locomotives hasn't turned up anything before they magically turned into the NCB and adopted a green livery.

 

Can anybody assist, ideally with photos or links to photos?

[jeff mcghie]

A Friend of the old man's has a (B&W) photo of No 33 at Barclay's at Kilmarnock and says that it was painted Olive Green with red/black/yellow lining.

 

(edit)

 

The blue livery was applied by the works at Cowdenbeath from around 1942 through to nationalisation, the description given to me was a blue similar to Great Eastern Blue with bright red wheels and white (!) rods and cab interiors.

 

HTH

 

Jeff

[Caledonian]

Great, thanks for that. The blue sounds as though it was a pretty standard Barclays paint job, probably more Caledonian than Great Estern blue. The Aberdeen Gas Works locos were painted the same way although they don't seem to have bothered with the red wheels and white rods as both were largely concealed behind skirting for street running.

 

Quite co-incidentally there's a reproduction of a postcard illustration of Methil Docks in the current Steam Days, with a rake of Fife Cola Co. wagons in the foreground. Its obviously the source for the Harburn Hobbies version as they have exactly the same markings and numbers. The postcard is undated but Edwardian with a lot of sailing colliers in the harbour and a couple of North British wagons, so we're clearly talking pre WW1, never mind pre-grouping.