Steamysandy

One of a batch built for APCM and used among other things for transporting bagged cement and Snowcem paint from Oxwellmains Cement Works to Aberdeen.The door logo is Blue Circle,APCMs trade name. I used to see them in the 1970s

By the way ,it's RESTON not Reeston.It also happens to be the name of a suburb of Washington DC! My family connections to it go back about a hundred years. Sandy

Now you know why Bachmann produced various Scottish identities on some of its models such as 61823(64A),60537,60529,80092,76109and73109 not forgetting the D11/2s!

I spent a very wet week at the Red Lion Caravan Park next to the factory in about 1965.Almost all the traffic was in 10 and 12 ton box vans which were stabled around Elliott Junction station.At that time Dundee had a pair of Ivatt 2mt 2-6-0s now 46463/4 ,one of which was used to move vans.One of them was later preserved. Cinerails DVD Railways of Scotland volume 8 has film of the line in use. Incidentally I remember waking one morning and pulling the curtain aside as an unidentified A4 passed heading South Light Engine and walking back from Arbroath town centre as 60522 Straight Deal roared past heading North on a long train of vans! Happy Days!!

Mark You're welcome.My dad had relatives in Berwickshire and I remember seeing the Duns line which ran close to the road between Duns and Chirnside.A deep cutting at one point was later filled in.I never saw a train on it but I do remember seeing vans in Crumstane siding. My Aunt later moved to a farm close to Gordon Station on the Green law branch and I can remember seeing a class 08 shunter on the early morning pick up goods there. Best Wishes Alex

A further thought is that the west end would have been covered from Hawick sub shed St Boswells which could have had a J36 available but the east end from Reston to Duns was latterly covered by Tweedmouth (a North Eastern shed). so in theory a Q6 could have been used Cinerails Archive series Number 4 Both from Newcastle shows film from the late 1940s of freights passing Ayton behind Q6s wrongly identified as Q7s.The Ivatt 46475 mentioned earlier was a Tweedmouth engine but on one occasion a class 46 diesel no D181 was sent to Duns on the pick up goods and derailed in Duns goods yard as recorded in the book I mentioned earlier

Can I mention the Middleton Press book"St Boswell's to Berwick which covers the whole line.It includes track plans for all intermediate stations and sidings. C J L Romanesque who took a load of photos in the area pre war was a solicitor in Duns and he recorded an N2 and a G5 both of which were regular engines at different times

I personally saw the Night Ferry Fourgon at Edinburgh Waverley in platform 2.It was sporting a large plank to support a broken spring and I commented about it to a B R manager who was getting off the North Berwick train with me that morning.Colourwise it may have been blue as this was about 1973/4

There are a couple of things which are worth mentioning.Sercos franchise for the ferries is due for retendering in the near future. However the connections to the ferries are extremely poor if you don't have a car.In particular the bus service is only one bus direct to Scrabster harbour and Stagecoach seem to suit themselves how it's run. I've a friend in Stromness who has family near Inverness and the last twice she's been down to see them,she had a most unpleasant experience going south even though she had booked a seat.She returned to Thurso on the Train. Incidentally there are more trains between Thurso and Inverness than buses( 4 trains daily as opposed to 2 buses,the schedule for which has them both leaving Inverness between noon and 3 pm!) Certainly from the Central belt an overnight train has advantages in that a connection to the morning Ferry would be provided

This isn't the last weekend but particularly of what led to it. A few years back the BBC did a news item on the National news-it may have been about the reopening work.One of those who had put an objection to the closure was a schoolboy called Ralph Coleman and he appeared on the item. The same Ralph Coleman was for a time my boss at British telecom in Edinburgh in the early 1980s.

I can vividly recall seeing it heading South past Betony Bridge between Drem and East Fortune one morning when I was out on my bike-many years ago!

Good to see the Grand Scottish Tour No5 which I travelled on from Edinburgh.The return from Carlisle to Edinburgh was unusual to say the least,being via Dumfries, Kilmarnock, Stirling (where the 47 was replaced by a class40), Dunfermline Upper and the Forth Bridge!

Third post! Just remembered ,I have a Hornby R 2302 which was a special Hornby club model(500 only) of Union of South Africa with the crests all laid out as described.It originally had a 3 pole motor but I switched it for a 5 pole one off a Flying Scotsman to slow it down!

As a matter of interest ,on looking through the aforementioned book,it appears that 60012 Commonwealth of Australia also had the Country's crests on the Cabsides at least in the early to mid 1950s( B R early crest) At the other extreme is a disgustingly filthy 60002 Sir Murrough Wilson on the up Flying Scotsman coming off the King Edward Bridge.

Looking at 2 photos in"The Gresley Pacific's " by O S Nock,the Cabsides were adorned with the South African coats of arms on both sides and the Springbok was mounted half way along the boiler on the drivers side. One of the photos also shows the early BR crest on the tender so she must have carried these crests for quite a while!

A couple of Railtours were run in the Edinburgh area using 65234 and 65345 in the 1960s Both tours are on the Cinerails "Railways of Scotland" volume 3 dvd showing the in action including Corstorphine, Musselburgh and Leith

I believe that the Adams radials retained their LSWR livery throughout their time in the Highlands where they worked on the Kyle lineA photo of one returning south at Blair Atholl exists in a magazine I've seen

I've never been to Japan but I really went for an N gauge setup in recent years after firstly seeing an N gauge layout at an Edinburgh show some years ago and then watching it all on YouTube.(nothing moves without being filmed it seems!) I think it's the best set up I've ever owned.Its only assembled when I'm using it,the rest of the tie it's kept in its boxes. There is a world wide Group of modellers on the internet who go under Jns forum and they cover all aspects of Japanese railways

As an aside to this topic,when I was at North Berwick High School,a group of us were taken as part of career studies around Oxwellmains cement works about 1964. This included the quarry which at that time had a 3'6" gauge railway feeding the limestone into the works.It was later abandoned in favour of high capacity trucks and was I believe sent to a works in Malaysia.

As a local can I refer back to the photo of the 26 at Dunbar.There was a regular working northbound in the evening about seven o clock with a 26 and cemflos which also included a box van in Blue Circle colours which started from Oxwellmains and ran to Aberdeen as I recall. I photographed it on a few occasions but the slides are long lost.This would be in the early 70s when I lived near East Linton

I know I've said I'm not really interested but here's a suggestion.Bearing in mind that the Gresley corridors were pulled(out of the production list) in 2016, how about a brand new set of correctly profiled Gresley vestibule coaches whichever fewer doorhandles etc Just a thought!

C &G got me into American Athearn in the 1990s.George was at many shows at that time and it was cheap!Mac's Model Railroads in Helensburgh also kept me going.My wife was found to be ceoliac and the only place we could find gluten free sausages was a shop in Helensburgh so a load of Athearn thus acquired which I still have but it's seldom looked at now. One of these days I'll have to have a clear of!

Virtual Railfan on YouTube has a number of these webcams with some interesting locations. Ashland , Virginia is on the CSX mainline south of Washington and features freight and passenger trains running on a segregated double track down the Middle of the street and a level crossing.Amtrak stops in the street to drop and pick up passengers. On the BNSF Chicago to Kansas City mainline is La Plata with one Amtrak train a day!Station operations are best described as Chaotic and timekeeping is a joke! The great American railroad is a sad sight today