Scottish Steam Album was first published in 1978 and. even though it was soon sold out. it has never been reprinted until now. All the photographs are from the camera of Brian Morrison, a Scot by birth who has returned north of the Border for railway photography regularly since 1952.
In the 1950s there were still train services to most parts of the country, and of course, steam was everywhere! It was not necessary to use a car in those days and with judicious use of a Bradshaw timetable it was possible to travel quite extensively around Scotland during a week's holiday.
Many of the locomotive types at work in Scotland never ventured south of the Border and the goal was to not only obtain good photographs of Scottish trains, but to record an example of every locomotive class that existed there at that time. In fact the quest was not completed until Spring 1958 when one of the post- Grouping developments of the Caledonian Railway's 439 class 0-4-4Ts was hunted down in Glasgow St Enoch station.
This album therefore includes at least one example of every type of steam locomotive to be seen only in Scotland during the 1950s. except a couple that were cut up very early on in the decade. The reader is taken from Edinburgh up the East Coast via Dunfermline and Thornton Junction to Dundee and Aberdeen, thence across to Inverness and Kyle of Lochalsh and back south through Aviemore. Perth. Stirling and Glasgow to Kilmarnock and Dumfries, with quite a few slops on the way.
The main part of the album remains as originally published, but the opportunity has been taken to update the last section, covering steam preservation in Scotland. Railway preservation has grown to such an extent that steam is once again an important part of the Scottish railway scene - long may it continue to be so!