Railway Footbridge Sign, Fauldhouse

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 25 Apr 2021

This sign is on the bottom of the passenger footbridge at Fauldhouse railway station. I had no idea that footbridges were included in the old bridge numbering system. The numbers increase the further East you travel (round here anyway), as Bridge 78 takes the railway over the road leading to the station. SC007 is, I think, the railway route number, which in this case means it refers to the 'Edinburgh to Glasgow via Shotts' cross-country route. If this is commonly written on signs, it surely cannot always be, as certain railway lines will be part of more than one route. At the bottom it says '11M 70CH'. This stands for 11 miles and 70 chains. A chain is a distance of 66 feet (or 22 yards) and there are 80 of them in a mile. The railway industry seems to be the only place where chains still get used as a unit of measurement. Britain used to be in love with fractions, and the chain was, for this reason, very handy indeed, 80 being divisible by 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 16, 20 and 40. Whilst I do like to see old traditions kept going, I must confess I still find it rather baffling! It brought to mind a recent documentary commemorating 50 years of the pound's decimalisation - there were a lot of grumbles about 10 only being divisible by 2 and 5, whereas 12 (there used to be 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound) was far superior, being divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6. The distance from Fauldhouse to both Edinburgh and Glasgow is far greater than 11 and 7/8 of a mile. So I'm reckoning the distance is taken from a junction, but that's just a guess. Update, 8/9/21 : Bridge numbers are indeed numbered sequentially between junctions, which makes perfect sense. In this case the footbridge is nearly 12 miles East of Uddingston Junction. The SC007 bit of the sign is still a mystery as the code for this section of track which ends at Mid Calder Junction, 11 miles East of here, is EGS2, which appears on other more major bridges nearby.

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