B16 4-6-0 No 61440 on 26 October 1957.
This photograph came labelled as being at Wanton Walls Junction near Edinburgh, but according to a number of contributors who know the area well - it definitely is not. The following are some of the comments submitted to substantiate this claim.
The landscape looks wrong and the line crossing in the distance does not fit with the location. There are pointed top bings to the left, but the only bing near Wanton Walls was Newcraighall which was flat-topped and the orientation is all wrong, the scene is also too rural. I’d guess N.E. England.
The shrubs on the embankment, which look suspiciously like Portuguese laurels (Prunus lusitanica) or similar, are not there by accident, someone has planted them. I cannot recall this sort of line-side planting anywhere in the Scottish Region away from railway stations (where they were popular as part of station displays), certainly not in the Wanton Walls area.
The consist of the train does not suggest north of the Border as the first coach is ex GW and the next two ex GER.
The signal in the background is unusual and does not appear to be of North British design?
B16s were generally viewed as being a rarity in the area except it would seem for a period around 1955, as evidenced by this excert from Trains Illustrated Motive Power Miscellany of December 1955: “With the transfer of B16 4-6-0s to Heaton this type is now much more in evidence in Edinburgh; on 25/9/55 no 61414 was observed at Haymarket and nos. 61410/3/40 at St Margarets'. So 61440 made it to Edinburgh at least once in 1955”, although the image is dated 1957.
I cannot see a B16 being dispatched up the ECML to Edinburgh with a 12 carriage train and wonder if it isn't more likely to be a Wetherby Race special.
The spars on the telegraph poles are on the side toward the photographer, so this would normally mean the train is going in the direction of London. An interesting one!
It’s not Wanton Walls - there is nowhere between Berwick and Edinburgh with another line crossing the ECML as depicted in the photo, and the only possible location north of Newcastle might have been where the Tyne Coast line crosses the ECML, but there are spurs leading down to the ECML, north and south, and the area is more built up than that depicted in the picture.
Any info would be appreciated.