This is a wonderful photo. It’s September 1959 and a train from Glasgow is just about to roll into Blantyre Station. In the days well before electrification of the line, carriages still pulled by steam and diesel engines.
Some men in bunnets stand by the edge of the line watching the locomotive, something that reminds us again of how much health and safety has changed, the exclusions zones much further back, fenced off.
On the right, the wee park at Knightswood Terrace can be seen.
To think my mother would have been just 11 years old when this was taken nearly 60 years ago
1959 September. Train
1959 Knightswood Terrace Park
On Blantyre Project social media, with granted permission. Strictly not for use on any other website or publication:
John Cornfield Cracking pic
The Blantyre Project its a thing of beauty. To have stood by the side of something so everyday and normal and taken a picture back then, now of such great interest today was showing a lot of foresight. Loads more previously unseen photos coming, especially in September and October.
Jan Mckinnon Rock on Blantyre
Anthony Smith I can still remember the steam trains.The carriages all had individual compartments,seating 8 people,with their own doors.Big leather strap to open and shut the window,and if you stuck your head out,getting bits in your eyes,possibly from the engine smoke stack.
The Blantyre Project sounds noisy!!
Anthony Smith The Blantyre Project The only real noise I can remember was the ‘ clacking ‘ of the wheels as they went over every gap where the individual rail sections met.
The Blantyre Project To think this lovely clear blue sunny day was nearly 60 years ago!
Rab Graham I remember standing on the bridge when the trains went past and the steam coming up
Ian McNaughton Probably the last time scotrail ran a train on time
John Lynaghan Remember it well and remember playing in the park my house was 24 knightswood terrace
Isabel Mcneily Remember them well. I would have been eight when this picture was taken, riding in them was the best. Isabel (Clarkin) McNeily
I was 10 when this picture taken and often took the train. We would go to Stonehouse to see my great grannie. The next year I went to school in Hamilton and remember the trains may have changed by then or I just got the last of the steam train? Not sure, but thanks for posting this awesome picture, I can smell it!! And hear it, we lived in hillview drive. Before that had lived in Knightswood terrace where my grannie and grandpa lived, and we stayed with them for a few years before my dad came home from the Korean war and we went to stay with his foster mother, Sarah Jane Cook in Calder Street. We got our own house somewhere in 1955 or 1956. I remember playing in that wee play park for hours when we were small. My mother was really hurt when she made the swing go so high that it circumnavigated the bar, she landed on the ground and the swing came back and hit her square in the back. She remembers never telling her parents, but was very dazed, hurt and sore.
Oh my goodness, I was 10 in 1959, and my grand parents lived in knightswood terrace, just a hop skip and jump from the station. I often got the train to Hamilton to “go messages” fir ma mammie. Then as 11 year old to go to the schull in Hamilton. Those were indeed heady days, when life was in front of us, the magic of travelling anywhere on those trains was intoxicating, the smell, the noise, lulling me into the imaginery world of travelling to different ports was exhilarating. My grampa worked for the railway and knew all the porters and high heid yins back then so we were well looked efter on journeys. Everything changed wi the coming of the electric trains, a new and very different world emerged, and not for the better in many ways.
Brilliant :), Can remember my granda taking me to the playpark about thirty five years ago… thanks for reviving memories. appreciated.