2021
NT0163 : Wheelset at Former Railway Bridge over Breich Water
taken 3 years ago, near to West Calder, West Lothian, Scotland
Wheelset at Former Railway Bridge over Breich Water
A wheelset, I have today found out, is the name given to a pair of railway wheels connected by an axle. This was an unexpected sight and there is another, more submerged wheelset at the Eastern side of the same bridge support column, which is on the Northern bank of Breich Water.
There were so many railway lines criss-crossing the countryside round here during the shale mining period from roughly 1850-1960 that without setting aside a huge part of your life, it is near impossible to know exactly what was transported on which line from and to where! This line first appears on OS maps in 1895 and was still there in a late 1960s published map, and would have served various incarnations of the Westwood mine.
The bank above the site of the old railway line is now planted with trees and extremely steep. From the old maps it looks as though the line was in danger of being submerged by all the spoil heaps surrounding it on this side of the burn, so must have cut a channel through mountainous heaps in its day.
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