RAILDATE 2024.09.13

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Thank you to this week's contributors.

The Weekly Poser (something new): Loco recognition

Please identify the locomotive class.

Please send your answers to raildate.co.uk@gmail.com

Last week's Where is this?

Lots of iron & steel making here, with the attendant railway network and a locomotive works (circled red). Where is it?

Answer: Coatbridge and Airdrie. Even with the map unmasked, the town names still don't appear but Coatbridge is west, Airdrie east. Congratulations are due to the following for their correct answers: Jim Allwood, Colin Penfold, Jeremy Harrison, Simon Wass, Richard Maund, John Lacy, Neil Spencer.

The railway network was a mixture of North British and Caledonian. It has shrunk a little, but most of these lines still exist. The area is highlighted (red) in the schematic below. The eastward line beyond Airdie towards Bathgate reopened in 2010, having closed to passengers in 1956. The locomotive works is quite obscure (I think), being Mosside Works of the Monkland & Kirkintilloch - becoming a sub-plant of Cowlairs under North British ownership from the mid-1860s, and later a wagon works.

The area is bisected by the Monkland Canal, built from 1771 under James Watt's supervision to serve Glasgow with coal. It never connected directly with the Clyde because of a 200-foot height difference.

A class 303 unit No. 060 is seen in the original all-blue livery at Airdrie 19/5/64. Image credit: M.J Burnett RCTS Collection

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life is marked in blue in the top map. It has a number of railway exhibits and a growing tram network. The Summerlee Transport Group is a separate entity from the museum, and has part of a Class 311 in its care.

SMALL PRINT

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©  Matthew Shaw 2024