The South Queensferry branch railway line was built in the 1860’s and ran from Ratho (where it joined the Edinburgh to Glasgow line) to the Royal Navy establishment at Port Edgar. South Queensferry had its own goods yard and there were stops for passengers at The Loan, New Halls, Dalmeny and Kirkliston, although these have all disappeared. The Royal Elizabeth Naval depot was also served.
The most famous engine to run the line, built in 1891 for the North British Railway Co. and numbered 673 was sent to the Western Front in 1915, following are-build, to help in the war effort, but was retuned in 1919 and named Maude after Lt. General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, a WW1 hero responsible for re-capturing Baghdad in 1917. The engine spent the remainder of its 75 year working life handling goods trains of Scotland’s tracks.
Thanks to an appeal by the Scottish Railway Preservation Society the locomotive was saved from the scrapheap and is now the sole surviving example of a typical Scottish freight locomotive and can be visited at the society’s museum at Bo’ness.
