Wemyss Private Railway near Buckhaven
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Wemyss Private Railway near Buckhaven by A-M-Jervis as part of the Geograph project.
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Wemyss Private Railway near Buckhaven
Image: © A-M-Jervis Taken: 23 Jul 2007
The Wemyss family had large estates in Fife and exploited the coal under their properties, several collieries (e.g. Randolph, Frances, Michael) being named after members of the family. In the 1890s Randolph Erskine Wemyss commenced to build a private railway system to link some of his collieries to Methil Docks without having to use the tracks of the North British Railway. When the Wemyss collieries were nationalised in 1947 the Wemyss Private Railway remained in private hands but continues to serve the collieries until 1970. Much of the railway and its branches have been reclaimed by agriculture, as here east of the B930 road north of Buckhaven, but a surviving relic is a massive gatepost of the former level crossing. The hill in the distance is Largo Law.
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Image Location
Latitude
56.179088
Longitude
-3.049596