Undiscovered Scotland

 

"Early Railways of Scotland" by Anthony Dawson and Ed Bethune is a superb book that will broaden the horizons of most readers, even those who thought they had a reasonable understanding of railway history. In the popular imagination, railways were an invention of the early 19th century which then expanded dramatically to become the most ubiquitous form of transport for goods and, for any distance longer than a comfortable walk, for people.

This book sets the record straight, and it does it in a nicely-written and beautifully-illustrated way that will appeal to anyone with an interest in early transport history or early industrial development in Scotland. This book moves the start of the story of railways back by a full century in Scotland and, in passing, even further in England. The authors give prominence in the book to the story of the Tranent-Cockenzie Waggonway, which was built (and frequently improved and rebuilt) in the years from 1722, and this is both understandable and justified in light of the extensive archeological work undertaken on the waggonway in recent years and the authors' connections with it. But they also nicely expand the story to include other early Scottish railways, many around the River Forth, but as far afield as Brora in Sutherland.

You get an excellent sense of the range of content of the book from the publisher's description: "Scottish railway history began in 1722 when William Dickson commenced work on the Tranent–Cockenzie Waggonway. Built entirely in wood and designed to carry coal from pits at Tranent to salt pans at Cockenzie, it was the first railway to be built in Scotland. Developing first in the most industrialised parts of the country, in the Lothians and later around Glasgow, wooden and iron railways flourished in no small part thanks to the work of Robert Stevenson. Ed Bethune and Anthony Dawson of the 1722 Waggonway Project present a century-long tour of the earliest of Scottish railways, beginning in 1722 and ending with the Garnkirk & Glasgow Railway of 1831, the first ‘modern’ railway in Scotland. The 1722 Waggonway Heritage Group was established in 2017 to preserve, promote and enhance the history of the Tranent–Cockenzie Waggonway through research, archaeology and community heritage initiatives. Thanks to the work of the group, much is now known about how early wooden railways were constructed and how early nineteenth-century fish-bellied rails laid on stone blocks worked, as well as the 1833 Robert Stevenson-designed harbour at Cockenzie."

"Brand-new information from the archival and archaeological work into Scotland’s earliest railways is showcased alongside fascinating and rare images, all serving to set the scene for the beginnings of the Scottish railway network as conceived by trailblazers William Dickson, William Adam and Robert Stevenson."