THE GLASGOW & SOUTH-WESTERN RAILWAY

The Glasgow & South-Western Railway served a much more compact area than its peers, the Highland, Caledonian and North British Railways. One can trace its origins to the Kilmarnock and Troon colliery line – a pioneering 10 mile stretch that carried Scotland’s first passenger services, and in 1817 (temporarily) ran the first steam locomotive in Scotland. A consolidation of various smaller railways in the southwest in 1850 produced the G&SWR, which was to become one of the five great Scottish Victorian railway companies, and a great boon to the industrialising city of Glasgow and its attendant ports.

The G&SWR’s central hub was at St. Enoch Station in Glasgow, a mighty edifice including the imposing St Enoch Station Hotel – the first building in Glasgow to be fitted with electric light. As well as connecting to Scotland’s busy southwestern routes, regular services to England were run down the west coast via Carlisle. The route was acknowledged to be slower than competing east coast services, so compensated for this by letting passengers travel in far greater style and comfort.

Always slightly compact in scale, the G&SWR favoured running smaller tender locomotives on their services. Towards the end of the railway’s life, the engineer Robert Whitelegg joined the company and brought with him a knowledge of large tank engines. The G&SWR 540 ‘Baltic’ 4-6-4T were a Whitelegg design, and incredibly well engineered, built to the highest specifications. Despite high maintenance costs, they performed exceptionally well and were kept in service for many years after the G&SWR was absorbed into the British railway network in 1923. We chose the Whitelegg Baltic for the bottle label, to show the G&SWR at its most confident.

THE CALEDONIAN RAILWAY

We have already mentioned the Caledonian Railway in passing. Our second release in the Scotch Express series was of their main rival, the North British Railway – and we described the enmity that burned between these two Victorian companies. Now, with the fifth and final bottle we can balance the scales and tell the story of the diva-esque Caledonian.

Glasgow based, the Caledonian Railway was founded off the back of a successful west-coast passenger connection to Carlisle. Over the course of its life, the Caledonian made aggressive territorial grabs to extend its reach into the territories of the North British and Glasgow & Southwestern Railways. Much revenue was generated from coal haulage, but the CR wanted to be Scotland’s pre-eminent mode of travel for well-to-do passengers, and spent lavishly in order to attract commuters and tourists to its services.

The approach paid off, and the CR came to be seen as the grandest of Scotland’s railways, especially when played against the staid and plodding reputation of the NBR. In all things the CR was a beautiful and attention grabbing railway, with stylish station architecture, grand railway hotels, shining blue locomotives, lusciously printed marketing and a cheeky grab for Scotland’s Royal coat of Arms to use as their own personal symbol.

The most iconic of the Caledonian’s express engines was the 4-6-0 class 903 ‘Cardean’, which is heading south to Carlisle on our label, along one of the two routes that linked Scottish to English railways – and served as the main battleground between the Caledonian and the North British railways.

INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED RAILWAY ARTIST ROBIN BARNES

A 1940s childhood passed within sight and sound of a busy main-line railway on which every train was hauled by a steam locomotive, many of them bearing names to grip the youthful imagination – Golden Eagle, Royal Lancer, Sayajirao, Irish Elegance, Jingling Geordie and Wizard of the Moor – led inevitably to a fascination with trains and railways, which over time broadened into a wider interest in other forms of transport too, on the sea and in the air. Without Robin’s artwork, this series would not exist. He has captured iconic locomotives in highly detailed watercolour on the bottles, and scenes of the railways in their wider Scottish context for our magazine advertising.