Scottish steam

Photograph by John Sutters. Note the wooden buffers and three-link couplings.

In the summer of 1952, having travelled from Ripon by train, as we did on nearly all our holidays, we stayed at Monifieth. I was six and one day train-spotting with Dad we stood on this bridge as a train puffed underneath. Whether deliberately or by coincidence the whistle was blown directly under us. For years after, my Dad teased me about being frightened by 64620, a Dundee shedded J37, and made up a little ditty about the event, of which only the loco's number sticks in my head! Railways were pioneers in the use of telegraphy and telephony. The telegraph pole on the right of this scene is typical of the rows strung out along all the main railway lines right through until the 1960s & 70s.