64602 1965-05-01 near Markinch or St Andrews
NBR J37 0-6-0 No 64602 on a special four coach railtour for Queen’s College Railway & Transport Society from Dundee on May 1st 1965.
Craig McIntosh says "I believe that this special was taken on a visit to the Markinch to Leslie branch in Fife". Interestingly Six Bells Junction has very little details about the tour but a photo matches with the condition of the loco and the first coach.
Ian Norman says "May I offer a potential alternative location for this photo?
There is a photo of the train at Dundee with the Gresley coach behind the loco. There’s another photo of the train at Anstruther showing the same. Both photos have white loco buffers.
The train would have to reverse at Thornton to return to Dundee via Markinch, unless it traversed the Fife Circle. For your photo location to be correct, this would involve turning the whole train to keep coach behind loco. To keep the white buffers the train would need to be towed from Markinch to Leslie. There is also what looks like a hillside behind the trees at the left of the photo. My recollections are that the south side of Glenrothes was a very wide, shallow valley.
To me, the photo is more likely Cairns Den, just south of St Andrews, which even has a milepost in the correct position!
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the tour didn’t end up in Leslie".
Photo: W.J. Verden Anderson / Rail Archive Stephenson