At the end of July 1913, five young Blantyre miners found themselves in hot water standing in the dock at Hamilton Sheriff Court.
They were charged with trespassing on the railway siding beside the Auchinraith Signal Cabin belonging to the North British Railway Company on 25th June that year.
Their plea was guilty, explaining that the siding led to several of the Blantyre pits. The miners explained the siding was used by many people to get to work and they simply followed, not believing they were doing any wrong.
Previous prosecutions on this stretch of the railway had taken place and seemed to have been forgotten about as the men took their short cut. The Judge fined them each 8s 3d or 3 days imprisonment.
The signal cabin is pictured in the 1960’s, by then quite derelict. The exact location of Auchinraith Junction today is now at the top of the slip road coming from Lidl supermarket back on to the A725 heading to EK at Springwells. The houses at Springwells should put this photo back into context.
That is so unfair, just revenue collecting from poor miners, so unjust when it was a well known pathway to take