Wemyss Bay

The station at Wemyss Bay is a glorious example of engineering elegance, providing spacious, light and weather protected space for passengers. I have to admit that I only visited because of the station, but luckily it has a clock so it can be included in this blog.

The station dates from 1903, although the railway reached here in the 1860's. It is one of only ten 5-star stations in Simon Jenkins' book "Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations" (Viking Books - 2017), and indeed is the cover photograph. All of the other nine are big main line stations, so Wemyss Bay is somewhat of a unique gem.

It is also named as the Most Impressive Station by Vicki Pipe and Geoff Marshall's "The Railway Adventures" (September Publishing - 2018).

This is the view of the booking office, with its simple clock.

And now for some gratuitous pictures of the station.

 

 

Including some old posters:

Of which this one has some particular relevance i.e. Wemyss Bay station is also a ferry terminal for the journey across to the Isle of Bute.

This curved ramp leads down to the ferry....

...which waits outside.

 

 Once outside we also realise that the station has a prominent clock tower.

 

Lockerbie

In Lockerbie for a meeting on a very wet day. Lockerbie is in the south-west of Scotland, and is a small settlement with a population of about 4,000. Hence my hopes of capturing a hatful of clocks (otherwise known as a clockerbie) were not high.

In fact the only clock in sight was on the Town Hall, a splendid creation of 1880.

Nothing to do with clocks, but outside the Town Hall is a delightful sheep sculpture (or what you might call a flockerbie).

The closest I came to another public timepiece was this tower, which I assume was once a clock tower.

The building is now the church hall, but was built in 1866 as the Mechanics Institute.