Bo’ness & Kinneil Railway | Museum of Scottish Railways

The Bo’ness & Kinneil Railway on the shores of the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh operates trains over an 8 km track, and includes Scotland’s largest railway museum which opened in 1995, and is located 500 m from Bo’ness station. It collection consists chiefly of characteristic Scottish locomotives, including a Caledonian Railway 0-4-4T tank engine built at St Rollox, Glasgow, in 1907 and a North British Railway 0-6-0 freight engine, built in Neilson in Glasgow in 1891, of a type which was taken to France during the First World War. It is named Maude after Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude (1864-1917). Other locomotives that were built in England but served extensively in Scotland include D49 class 4-4-0 Morayshire, built at Darlington in 1928, and No 80105, a 2-6-4T tank engine built at Brighton in 1955. A 4-4-0 of the Great North of Scotland Railway, Gordon Highlander, is on loan at the museum. Also on display are a vintage Glasgow Subway car and one of the ‘Blue Train’ electric units introduced when the first Glasgow suburban lines were electrified in the 1960s. Visitors can also see the interior of a Royal Mail travelling post office, together with clips from the celebrated documentary film Night Mail of 1936 which features the London-Glasgow mail train. There are also two beautifully-restored coaches from the Caledonian Railway, and the royal saloon built in 1897 for the Great North of Scotland Railway.