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Newsletter No.25 October 2008 Notes from The Newsletter No.25 October 2008 One episode in fifty years of railway warfare: the Tay Bridge collapse of 1879 Notes from the Chair and Archive News p2 The Railway Battle for Scotland p4 Abernyte: the quiet revolution p10 Drummond Castle and Gardens p12 Crossword p16 Notes from the Chair Since our last Newsletter we have enjoyed (or perhaps endured?) the summer, during which the Friends participated in a variety of activities, notably our outing to the Gardens and Keep at Drum- mond Castle on 21 July. It was great fun, enhanced by sunny, warm weather and Alan Kinnaird has written a most interesting and detailed account on pages 12-15. The Voice of Alyth kindly described our presentation of A Mosaic of Wartime Alyth on Thursday 5 June as "fascinating and very well-received". Certainly, those who attended were responsive and we were given some intriguing information about events in Alyth during the Second World War. A couple of the townsfolk have volunteered to let us record their memories on tape for an oral history project. On our side, this will involve talking to the volunteers concerned, recording the conversation and - arguably the hardest part! - transcribing it. In accordance with the maxim that many hands make light work, we shall be asking Friends to volunteer to participate in this pro- ject. Other summer activities, all most enjoyable, included the Family History Day in the AK Bell Li- brary on 23 August, and the Rait Highland Games on the 30th, where Hilary Wright made a hit teaching children how to write with quill pens. We have already had the first general meeting of the 2008-2009 session, with an interesting talk on the Sandemans of Springland by Dr Charles Waterston, himself a distinguished scientist and great- great- great- great- grandson of the notable furniture maker, George Sandeman of Springland. To those who have not yet purchased a copy of Perth Entrepreneurs: the Sandemans of Springland, I can warmly recommend this readable and well-illustrated book, the proceeds of which are going to Capability Scotland, the organisation for people who have disabilities. We have another superb programme of talks still to look forward to, and I look forward to seeing lots of Friends at these meetings. Margaret Borland-Stroyan 2 Archive News We’ve always thought of ourselves as a Community Archive as well as a Council Ar- chive. We hold P&KC records but we also welcome collections from local individuals, businesses and groups, we go out and give talks about the collections, and we arrange tours, workshops and activities in the Archive searchroom. But now we’re planning to take things a wee step further and get more actively involved with local communities. So we’ll be supporting the Friends’ Alyth Wartime Oral His- tory Project, helping to establish a historical society for Rait and District, and we’re looking at ways to help create col- lections by minority and younger communities with the help of Rainbow Lives (their website at www.rainbowlives.org.uk is well worth a look). And as we’ve always done, we’re happy to give advice to people who have their own collections: on how best to store your documents, where to get conservation treatment and suggest how best you can arrange and list your collection to aid understanding of it. If you’re interested in creating your own virtual archive, log on to www.communityarchives.org.uk to see what other groups have done. Meanwhile though, work inside the Archive continues, accepting accessions from a wide variety of sources, including ACC08/42 bound ms sermons preached by Rev Thomas Shaw who was minister of Scone, c1709-1745 and ACC08/29 the cashbook of John Forrest, miller at St Martin's Mill, Guildtown, which lists payments from customers for supplies of oatmeal, thirds, bran etc., 1916-1920. We’ve been rather slow fully catalogu- ing our accessions over the summer, but a couple of handlists have been compiled thanks to our Friends’ volunteers, including the records of MS287 League of Friends of Perth Royal Infirmary. For more details about our new accessions and listed collections, why don’t you log on to the Archive web pages at www.pkc.gov.uk/archives? Rhona Johnstone It is my sad duty to report the recent death of one of our longstanding members, Mrs Rhona Johnstone. Rhona had been one of our volunteers, working on a number of projects until ill-health intervened. She had long been a user of the archives, back to the days when we were in the Sandeman Library. She had worked in the Sandeman Library herself in her younger days and although this was before my service be- gan it gave us a common bond. All the staff in the archives will miss her and our sympathies go to her sis- ter and3 the rest of her family. Steve Connelly The Railway Battle for Scotland Prof Charles McKean, the eminent Scottish historian, is a well-kent figure in the P&KC Archive and last year, his engrossing talk to the Friends, based on his book ‘The Battle for the North’ was well-received. In this exclusive article (to be concluded in our January issue) Prof McKean con- denses the often unedifying results of his research on the half-century of ruinous warfare between the east and west coast railways, and the enormous estuarial bridging projects this conflict brought into being. In the early 19th century, myriad small railway lines had emerged in Scotland, usually for local purposes like transporting coal from mines to harbours, and it was not until the 1820s that their stra- tegic potential was properly perceived. Among the first were the Dundonians, who appreciated that if the logical railway route from central Scotland to Aberdeen lay up Strathmore, it would leave their burgh isolated on a peninsula. Thus in 1825, its Council promoted a railway from Dundee to New- tyle in Strathmore, followed by the Dundee to Arbroath in 1838, and Dundee to Perth in 1847. Nonetheless, the success of the Edinburgh to Glasgow railway of 1836 revealed the potential of trunk railways, and Scotland was seen as a tasty morsel by railway companies forging north from London. Whereas France predetermined the principal national routes and controlled how they were constructed, Parliament refused to follow French example, believing that faith in the market was su- perior. Parliament claimed the power to licence railways, ostensibly in order to protect the public interest against monopoly, but then refused to police either its decisions or railway companies’ op- erations. The Parliamentary procedures for licensing new companies and new lines were both so ex- traordinarily amateur and so enormously expensive, that the great gentleman railway contractor Thomas Brassey observed that he had been able to build the Turin railway at less cost than the ex- pense of steering the London to York railway through Parliament. By 1839, fifteen proposed trunk lines between Scotland and England were being touted, the princi- pal ones being from Carlisle north to Castle Cary on the way to Aberdeen, and the east coast route from Newcastle north up the east coast to Edinburgh. The Liberal MP for Berwick, Richard Hodg- son, a key mover in the latter, met the railway entrepreneur George Hudson to discuss how the east coast route between Edinburgh and London might be achieved. There was doubt, however, that the volume of Scottish trade could take both lines. In a rare (and short-lived) example of dirigisme, Par- Dundee to Newtyle Railway, 1825; a sketch by the railway’s engineer, Charles Londale 4 (image reproduced courtesy of ARMMS, University of Dundee) (but surely a 60 ton train would require more than 1 horse power?) liament appointed a commission in 1839 to select the best route between the two countries. It opted for the West Coast route coming up from Carlisle. However, a minor slump followed, so the West Coast proposal lay dormant. In 1844, the East Coast promoters seized the initiative to pass a bill through parliament, ostensibly for a line from Edinburgh to Dunbar (to do what? Bring fish to the capital?) but was actually a conniving deal negotiated with Hudson to extend the line down to Berwick on the understanding he would bring his line north from Newcastle and bridge the Tweed. The following year, the West Coast promoters applied to Parliament, and Parliament, ignoring the Commission’s conclusion that there was only sufficient traffic for a single route, let it through as well. The Government had changed and the new one would not interfere. The East Coast line boasted of uni- fying Britain through linking Edinburgh to London and styled itself the North British Railway Com- pany. The West Coast line, believing that the 1839 parliamentary commission had given it droit de sei- gneur over the whole of Scotland, took the name of the Caledonian Railway Company, chose St An- drews blue for its livery and adopted the national motto -nemo me impune lacessit- as its own. It envi- sioned itself as a great national railway river to which minor tributaries may feed; but any obdurate company that stood in its way would be summarily dealt with. While it was too late to stop the North British reaching Edinburgh, it was determined to prevent the North British getting north of the Forth to share in the lucrative trade with Aberdeen. Between 1845 and 1850, the two companies consolidated, purchasing minor railway companies and completing their first lines so as to generate desperately needed revenue. Nonetheless, they were over- spending. In 1849, the Caledonian nearly went bankrupt as the consequence of over-expansive plans on which it had wasted all its capital – deceiving its shareholders in the process.
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