Discovering Scotland's Lost Local Lines

[Stewart]

Discovering Scotland's Lost Local Lines.

 

By Julian Holland, published by Waverley Books.

 

Been meaning to post this since Christmas! Mother-in-law came good with a other excellent railway book pressie.

 

160 pages illustrating 13 of Scotland's lost 'local lines' with text history and pics of each line. Pictures are both current as in the infrastructure today and historical. Lines covered include Castle Douglas-Kirkcudbright, Newton Stewart- Whithorn, Reston - St. Boswells and the Mound-Dornoch among others.

 

Maybe not an essential purchase, perhaps best to browse before purchase, but a very nicely produced book all the same and happy for it to take a place on my railway library.

 

Regards,

 

Stewart Glendinning

[R E Faust]

Hi Stewart

 

Does it only cover Castle Douglas-Kirkudbright or the whole Port Road? I have CEJ Fryers book 'The Portpatrick and Wigtonshire Railways' but am always interested in more on the history of the line.

 

Also, any details of loco rolling stock or track plans?

 

thanks

 

R E Faust

[Softvark]

It is just Castle Douglas-Kirkcudbright and there are no track plans but several pages of evocative photos of the line in use and how it looks now.

 

Julian

[Guest stuartp]

Thanks Stewart, I'll keep an eye out for that. Any book with Garlieston on the front cover has to be worth a look !

 

R.E. - It looks from the blurb here that Mr Holland's earlier work covered the Port Road proper, although I've not seen that yet either. (Other booksellers are available, this lot just happened to be the first hit on Google...) If you've got Fryer then the OS maps in there are as good as it gets without a day out in the National Archives (who have a lot of stuff). D L Smith's 'Little Railways of Southwest Scotland covers the whole history of the line (and the Ayrshire & Wigtownshire) and includes a couple of plans (Stranraer, Newton Stewart, Wigtown, Whithorn from memory) but they're unscaled and don't show any detail other than the track layout. It's a damn good read but you'll need to search second hand dealers for it. 'Rails to Portpatrick' by HD Thorne is probably the definitive work as far as the pre-1923 history is concerned, it was re-printed a few years ago by GC Books of Wigtown and may still be available from them (and the re-print has a cracking pic of 78026 at Garlieston on the dustjacket...).