At the nationalisation of Britian's railways in 1948, the Scottish Region inherited 1,400 locomotives that had been constructed by the pre-grouping companies. The real veterans among these were a handful of ex-NBR and CR 0-6-0 tender locos dating from the 1880s. From the 1890s were a large number of 0-4-4s and 0-4-0s from the same sources. The rarest survivors were the ex-HR 4-4-0 "Loch" and "Small Ben" classes, totaling fewer than 10 examples that were allocated to the sheds in the far north of Scotland. From the late 1940s and '50s enthusiasts from England would make the long journey north in what became known as the "Grand Tour" to see these rare classes before they became extinct. Fortunately many of these intrepid souls carried cameras to record the locos and together with their Scottish counterparts were, by the early 1960s, witnessing rows of these veterans at sheds and dumps across Scotland awaiting the scrapyard. This new book is arranged chronologically, covers the whole of Scotland and shows the wide variety of steam power from the early examples mentioned above to more modern classes of the LNER, LSR and BR Standard in operation. A must-have for all steam railway enthusiasts.
