Colin J. Howat looks at traction around Scotland.

Highly illustrated history of Scottish engines from the 1880s-1940s, plus the story of National Museum Scotland's 1907 Marshall traction engine.

For half a century from 1948, Scotland's railway system was operated, for the first time, as a complete administrative unit - but also as part of a nationalised system for the whole of the UK. Scottish Region soon developed its own character, with its own problems and potential. Yet it suffered the same fate as the rest of the system - lack of modernisation in the first ten years, the later supply of Diesel and electric traction equipment which was not properly tested, the Beeching axe and the asset stripping prior to privitisation. This is the first ever history of Scotland's BR.