Long after steam engines disappeared from passenger rail lines, they were used extensively around Scotland's coal mines until as late as 1981. In this collection of 58 superb photographs, taken by the author during the mid- to late 1970s, these engines are shown hard at work at collieries in Ayrshire, Fife, Clackmannanshire, Stirlingshire, Lanarkshire and the Lothians. Enhanced by informative capt...
The fascinating story which begins with a visionary chemist from Glasgow, James Young, and his innovation and tenacity in developing and refining the process of extracting useable oil from the Lothian shale fields. Much has been written about mining and Scottish coal but relatively little about the shale oil industry which brought whole villages into existence and transformed an entire area west o...
As early as the seventeenth century, there were primitive wagonways serving coal pits in the Lothians. In 1831 the Edinburgh & Dalkeith (horse-drawn) railway opened, then the Lothians had their first taste of steam with the opening of the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway in 1842. The next fifty years saw a substantial expansion of the railway network, with routes pushing out from Edinburgh to many town...
The Pentlands cover an area of approximately 75 square miles and are some of the best loved hills in Scotland. Admired by Sir Walter Scott and beloved of Robert Louis Stevenson they house many archaeological treasures among their peaks including iron-age hill forts and stone with cup and ring markings. The photographs in this volume from the nineteenth and early 20th century evoke a gentler age wh...