More about the railway in Dunbar again this month. With the re-opening of a second platform in 2019 featuring in this week’s East Lothian Courier this is a topical issue once again.
The first example is a poster advertising Dunbar as a favourable place to visit. There is no date on the poster and the photo of the pool suggests it might be in the 1920s. However, the pool photo and the poster may not be contemporaneous, so it could be the 1930s. The 3rd class fare on the poster is 3/1d for a distance of 2 x 29 miles. The Railway Regulation Act of 1944 stated that 3rd class fares be set at 1d per mile, so this poster would precede that. Interestingly, the site above also states that the Act stipulated that 3rd class passengers should travel in covered coaches although this was only guaranteed for one train per day in each direction.
The second photo shows the signal box to the east of Dunbar Station. Again, there is no date for this photo. In the background, you can see the Parish Church and its graveyard and to the right, the Bellevue Hotel, as it was known locally. The signal box is no longer there but the telegraph pole (photo above), with the ironwork on the side remains. The lettering on the hotel is Hotel Bellevue using the French version, perhaps to make it appear more exotic.
The photo above shows a steam train passing the Dunbar East signal box. You can see that, compared with the previous photo, that the Dunbar East sign is lower at this period. This was an earlier photo, so the sign must have been moved at some point. The engine is 61878 and you can see here that the engine was in service from 1929 to 1959, so the photo could be in the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s. It’s an impressive sight.
The final picture is an extract from a brochure produced in 1996 for an exhibition by East Lothian Museums commemorating the 150th anniversary of the opening of Dunbar Railway Station. If you enlarge the brochure, you will see that one of the original plans was to end the railway at the harbour, to exploit the commercial aspects of East Lothian. You can read more about the two key figures i.e. John Learmonth and George Hudson by following these links.
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