Perth

“I have never been to Perth station”, I remarked to my daughter, when she informed me that her work was taking her there by train. Indeed, I never got to Scotland at all in the age of steam. I had to rely on railway magazine photos by WJV Anderson [Bill, to his friends, including Les Nixon at our recent railway club meeting].

Perth station was designed by Sir William Tite and opened by the Scottish Central Railway in 1848. It had an overall roof, part of which still stands. I knew it through the railway press as an impressive junction station, where ex-LM and ex-LNER named engines rubbed shoulders.

More recently, I had come across two paintings by George Earl in which he had recorded the upper classes on the platforms in the 1890s at King’s Cross and Perth, prior to and then at the end of the shooting season, respectively. Nineteenth century railway stations provided new opportunities for artists to witness a mingling of the social classes of the kind that the upper classes had perhaps gone out of their way to avoid [excepting those in direct service, of course] and in spite of the provision of first-class waiting rooms.

Aware of my interest, my daughter kindly took a couple of pictures to remind me of something that remains on my “must do” list for now. The Caledonian Sleeper stock is double-headed on its journey between Inverness and Euston. She also noticed State Car No. 1 [formerly named “Amber”] from the Royal Belmond Pullman set. It must be in the blood.