Applying the brake to lost Glasgow & South Western Railway heritage
IT is not widely realised that the Scottish Railway Preservation Society’s (SRPS) collection at the Bo’ness & Kinneil Railway collection contains some of the most important pre-Grouping carriages in UK preservation, not least of all the two magnificent Caledonian Railway coaches, Nos. 1375 and 464, and the 1898 Great North of Scotland Railway Royal saloon.
One other vehicle which is now in the final stages of restoration is the society’s Glasgow & South Western Railway (GSWR) James Manson passenger brake van of 1901, No. 122.
The GSWR was the third ranking pre-Grouping Scottish railway, after the North British and the Caledonian. But due to the early withdrawal of its locomotives after 1923 as the LMS pursued its policy of standardisation, only one engine survived
