#former railway station

[conatic]

Belgique Belgium

Hainaut

Mons

Ancienne Gare de Mons

[artfromthefuture]

Solingen. Wandgemälde an der Fußgängerbrücke des stillgelegten Hauptbahnhofs by wwwuppertal Via Flickr: Solingen. Wandgemälde an der Fußgängerbrücke des stillgelegten Hauptbahnhofs

[justanotherguyincali]

Solingen. Wandgemälde an der Fußgängerbrücke des stillgelegten Hauptbahnhofs by wwwuppertal Via Flickr: Solingen. Wandgemälde an der Fußgängerbrücke des stillgelegten Hauptbahnhofs

[lets-take-a-break]

旧別海村営軌道風蓮線奥行臼停留所

Former Betsukai Village Railway Furen Line Okuyukiusu Station

北海道野付郡別海町　Notsuke-gun, Betsukai-cho, Hokkaido, Japan

2024/08

[famousinuniverse]

Statue of Liberty, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France: The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. Wikipedia

[hazel-of-sodor]

Imagine being an LMS express engine, back in the thirties, arguing with Gordon at Barrow, you blow your deep LMS whistle to try and assert dominance, but instead of the Gresley blowing his shrill inferior whistle in retaliation, he replies with a HOOTER of all things, defaming the stations. The rumor was true, the Gresley has a whistle that can out do even the deepest of deep-toned whistles. Never shoulda got transferred.

Well looks crack this one open shall we?

Lets get into the social dynamics and politics of the LMS, Barrow, and NWR.

So Gordon is top dog in Barrow, end of the story. While Barrow yard is far larger in this world than ours due to the existance of Sodor, its Industries, Harbors, and People, the largest Express Engines allocated there are usually 4-6-0s. Pacifics do venture down to Barrow, but heres the thing, hes their Elder.

Ask any Engine in Britian who the first (British) pacific was, they will invariably say Gordon (Neither The Great Bear nor Henry were largely successfull as 4-6-2s, and are seen as having found their true forms as 4-6-0s). Invariably class protoypes (successfull ones at least) are held in higher regard, but Gordon pionered the type. No matter He is former GNR/LNER and current NWR, Gordon is the first and is therefore the eldest. One could be forgiven for thinking that Gordon could have lost this respect in his younger years, but decourm in stations is the law for express engines (whisting in stations isn't wrong, but we just don't do it). Flagship express engines are the image of their railway, and are expected to uphold said image while in station. On the rare occasion LMS Pacifics did stay in Barrow longer than it took to refuel and prepare for their next run, they found Gordon a proud but gracious host, as was proper. (it helded that their opinion of him matched his own.)

The 4-6-0s, however were another matter. The Stanier 4-6-0s were content to tease their larger cousins about their hero worship, and keep a cordial relationship with North Western No.4. The Fowler's, however were...divided. The Patriots and Royal Scot's were aware of the threat of standardization. Stanier was not known to be sentimental man, and there were fears among some of the classes that they would be scrapped in favor of Stanier's standard engines (in reality a number of both class would be rebuilt to use Stanier Boilers.)

Some of these engines decided to deal with these fears by competeing feircly with their Stanier contemporaries, and for some this was not a friendly competition. These engines saw Gordon not as an honored elder or a respected collegue, but a part of the enemy. The incident this ask refers to occured in 1935, when a young Patriot class, newly assigned to Barrow decided to try and get a rise out of the Pacific. Gordon treated the younger express engine with all the restrained derision and posh superiority he felt the situation called for. Needless to say the Patriot only got angrier and angrier, leading to him trying to silence the North Western Engine with a long, rude, blast of their whistle, a dire breach of station etiquette.

Gordon intially waited impatiently for the whistle to stop, but when the 20 second mark was passed, he responded in kind. While Gordon only gave a short blast, the Patriot fell silent in shock as a Gordon's Pennslyvannia Railroad whistle thundered out. In the ringing silence afterwards, Gordon explained in manner simular to an exasperated parent correcting a toddler that one did not raise their whistle in stations unless they were departing or arriving, and they most certainly did not hold their whistle.

The LMS, throughly embarressed by their engines behavior, quickly reallocated the patriot to the other side of their territory (although they would return during the war.)

[stephensmithuk]

The Lost Special

CW for discussion of sexual abuse and capital punishment.

Originally published in The Strand in 1898, i.e. during the hiatus years, this would be collected with a bunch of other Doyle stories in the Round the Fire Stories collection released in 1898. Doyle continued to have stories regularly published during the hiatus.

The London and West Coast Railway Company is fictitious; the company that operated the line discussed in this route was the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), the biggest revenue earner of the period due to the sheer size of its operations. It would become part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) in 1922 during "Grouping" i.e. the merger of British railway companies into four major ones. The LNWR name came back as the London Northwestern Railway brand of West Midlands Trains in 2017, operating commuter and semi-fast services from Euston. That franchise is due to operate until 2026, at which point, considering the likely result of the upcoming election, it will be nationalised. What happens to the name after that remains to be seen.

Liverpool Central refers to two stations. The one here is the six-platform "High Level" station, opened in 1874 as the headquarters of the Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC) and offering services to Manchester Central, London St. Pancras or even Harwich for the ferry services to the Netherlands. The CLC remained independent after Grouping

There was also, slightly to the North West. the 1892-opened "Low Level" station, that was underground, opened by the Mersey Railway, but with staircase access to the High Level one and provision for a through railway connection left to that station if it was decided to join the two lines. This operated local trains towards Birkenhead using the world's second underground railway after London. This also stayed its own operation after Grouping in 1922; both companies would become part of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948.

In 1966, the Beeching Axe saw the High Level station have nearly all its services diverted to Liverpool Lime Street, with only those to Gateacre still calling there. BR wanted to stop those entirely, but local opposition prevented that. With no need for six platforms, two become a car park and the station ended up with just one functional platform in 1970, ending up in rather a state of decay. It shut entirely in 1972 and was demolished, the Gateacre services going, along with the whole North Liverpool Extension Line.

The Low Level station, however, still very busy, would have better fortunes - it would become the centre piece of the new Merseyrail network. The station was renovated, the two lines were linked and today Liverpool Central is one of the busiest stations in the UK outside of Greater London. However, the eastern part of the planned loop, including services to Gateacre, fell victim to budget cuts in the late 1970s.

Rochdale is a town in the Greater Manchester area - at the time it was a textiles hub, but that very much declined from the 1950s and the place has acquired a bad reputation. In 2012, a child sex abuse ring involving British Pakistanis "grooming" white girls was convicted in a high-profile trial and the resulting public reaction was, to put it mildly, racially-tinged. It also came out that the town's deceased former MP (who had in fact been knighted), one Cyril Smith, was a paedophile.

"Specials" refer to trains arranged outside the usual timetable, often in connection with some event. These included football excursions (or FOOTEX in BR parlance) carrying fans to away games around the country. In the hooligan-heavy 1970s and 1980s, BR would use older carriages due to the frequency of them getting damaged by drunken supporters, the whole thing becoming a policing headache. Others included various enthusiast-oriented journeys and "Merrymaker" mystery trips, usually to a seaside destination.

The main companies do not really do these today in anything like the numbers they used to, but various private companies have stepped in, including a West Coast Railways Company oddly enough, that provides the rolling stock, locomotives and drivers for the Jacobite tourist service from Fort William to Mailaig. These charter trains can be found operating multiple times a week, being sold through various different companies. Most use heritage rolling stock with vintage steam or diesel engines involved, with a variety of types catering to your tastes, although a big wallet is generally needed. Like at least £100 for standard class without dining and even then the schedule might not be the most convenient; these trains are planned around the regular services and you might have a long wait sitting in sidings for the next bit of your path to be clear.

In any event, the special train would have cost around £5,412 adjusted for inflation. However, a cursory glance suggests it would actually cost far more to do that today - hence the high prices modern "specials" charge passengers.

Signal boxes were required to log the details of trains passing through - the type could be identified by various lights arranged on the front and later the specific service by four-character codes. Today this is done electronically and monitored at larger control centres - older boxes have generally closed, with some being transported to heritage railways for their use. I would assume that the stations not mentioned did not have their own signal box.

In terms of the stations mentioned here, these were on the 1830-opened Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first intercity railway in the world.

This route is today part of the City Line in the Merseytravel Network - trains are today operated by Northern or TransPenine Express. It was electrified in 2015. For each station in turn...

St Helens Junction: Still open.

Collins Green: Closed 1951.

Earlestown: Still open, despite being listed for closure in the 1963 Beeching Report.

Newton-le-Willows: Still open. Even had a Motorail terminal for a while, but this is long gone.

Kenyon Junction: Closed to passengers 1961, shut entirely 1963. Various locals have called for reopening it.

Barton Moss, closed 1929.

Parliamentary trains are those which railway companies had a legal obligation to operate - basically to provide cheap services for workers. This could mean one train per day on a route. Some did the bare minimum, some did a lot more. With this requirement no longer around, the term has evolved to mean services run at the legal minimum, even as low as one train a week, because it's cheaper to do that rather than go through a closure process. In some cases, the route would be used for engineering work diversions and so it is needed to keep up driver familarity. Current examples include Pilning, which has two trains a week on a Saturday. The most notable is Teeside Airport, which is meant to serve the airport of that name that operates four to six passenger flights a day, but is a fifteen-minute walk away, so getting a bus is much more preferred. This got one train westbound a week until May 2022, when its platform was deemed unsafe and Teeside International Airport refuses to pay for repairs.

Railway companies had their own police forces; these would later come under the British Transport Police.

Many mines and industrial planets had connections to the national network for transporting goods like coal or clay; BR even developed a "Merry-Go-Round" system allowing hoppers to be filled up and emptied while moving at a very slow speed to save time on shunting; newer versions are still in use, despite the coal market having massively declined. Mines would have their own engines - the nationalised National Coal Board kept steam locomotives going until 1982, 14 years after BR stopped using them, with some of their former engines now featuring on preserved lines.

The Vistula river runs through central Poland, including Warsaw.

Many mines would be closed once their seams were worked out to the point of it being now longer economical to run; some are now tourist attractions, at least in limited sections.

France used the guillotine for capital punishment until the abolition of that in 1977. It would also be extensively used, in a slightly different form in the German states, including extensively by the Nazis, until 1966, when East Germany switched to shooting people in the back of the head.

New Caledonia is a French territory in the Southern Pacific that was used as a penal colony at the time; it is currently in a state of political turmoil in a row over expanding the franchise to cover more recent arrivals, something opposed by indigenous groups seeking independence. The proposal has been suspended at time of writing due to France's upcoming elections.

[engineer-gunzelpunk]

Scenes from 'This is Sodor: The Iron Age'/Calling All Engines humanized: Diesel Gets Defenestrated

The Tidmouth Gazette reports:

CHAOS AT KNAPFORD

Tensions between steam and diesel locomotives are set to escalate from this latest incident from the so called ‘Sodor Airport Conflict’. Main heavy fast goods locomotive, ex-(railway of origin unknown)Stanier Black Five NWR#3 ‘Henry’ was captured on photograph defenestrating ex-BR Class 08 ‘Diesel’ from a station window into a pit of mud after the former engine was humiliated by ex-BR Sodor Ironworks Class 08 shunters ‘Iron ‘Arry’ and ‘Bert’, when they assaulted him and doused him in oil in an earlier incident of violence on our fair Island home…’

"But for a few bruises and a besmirched outfit, he was unharmed'

"This is merely the latest incident of steam-diesel violence which includes; the aforementioned dousing in oil, ex-GNR NWR #7 steam tram "Toby" being hung up by the ankles from a loading ramp by Diesel, ex-LB&SC shunter NWR #1 "Thomas" getting doused in paint by Diesel (the triggering incident of the conflict), 'Arry getting shoved onto gravel by Thomas and ex-L&Y Class 28 NWR #5 "James" being grabbed and thrown under a coal hopper where he was subsequently buried in coal. His outfit was besmirched but he was otherwise unharmed.'

"It is to the shame of the NWR that we on fair Sodor should witness the type of mindless violence plaguing the Mainland in imitation of the conflicts between the youth cults of Mods, Rockers, Teddy Boys and Skinheads, particularly from our naughty engines. It behooves Sir Topham Hatt to quell the violence and restore order before it spreads out of control..."

"The Tidmouth Gazette with the kind permission of the Daily Mirror has printed this invaluable guide to the youth cults from which the engines are patterning their style and dress."

[weirdowithaquill]

Traintober 2023: Day 22 - Top Hat

The Railway is Prospering:

The railway was prospering. That was perhaps the first thing that the figure noticed. The books had been kind to the railway, in that they had drummed up hundreds, thousands of tourists who flocked to the island to ride behind the famous engines who worked there. The harbour extension at the end of Thomas’ branchline had made loading the stone from the quarry ever smoother, as they didn’t need to drag it all the way to Tidmouth.

And best of all, the engines were all still running.

Sir Topham Hatt wandered up to the ticket office at Wellsworth, spotting Edward collecting passengers for his afternoon train up to the Big Station. Even without a ticket, it was a little too easy to sneak aboard, finding an empty compartment and flopping down on the seats – only, they seemed to pass right through him.

Ah… right.

Instead, the figure of Sir Topham Hatt floated with his head out of the window, taking in the world around him in awe. There was Henry, speeding along with a fast freight train. His rebuild had truly done him wonders – thank goodness Sir William agreed to it, or Henry would… maybe not even be here. And over there was Gordon! He thundered by with the Express, whistling happily at Edward as the big blue engine drew alongside the old engine. They exchanged a fond greeting, and then Gordon was gone again, rocketing along.

James passed by next, grumbling dreadfully with a long train of tankers behind him. So… he’d not done so well with James – but he was still not only really useful, but reliable as well! And in spite of his grumbling, he was still pulling the trucks. As much as Sir Topham Hatt wanted to shout at the red engine to stop whining and get a move on, he recognised just how well the engine was doing.

Then, they passed through the Junction to Thomas’ branchline, and Sir Topham Hatt managed to spy all three of his former tank engines – Thomas, Duck and Percy – all shunting trucks together. It seemed like Duck needed a large order of stone, and the two other tank engines had brought it down for him. Furthermore, Toby stood nearby with Henrietta. All four looked healthy, happy and well-rested, a far cry from those dark days when the big engines refused to work. Then, Thomas, Percy and Edward had been forced to work day and night – nonstop – just to keep the railway open.

But now, they had time to slow down and chat, as well as spend time bantering. Sir Topham wondered just why Percy was talking about ghosts. He’d move closer to listen – but he didn’t want to lose Edward and his train.

Oh, Edward.

The blue engine looked so much happier now. He was running well; nary a clank in his motion. He smiled more too, happier than ever and so much brighter even though the day was cloudy. Sir Topham smiled wryly.

As much as he wanted to say his legacy was the greatness his engines felt now, he couldn’t honestly say it and be right. He’d done some admirable things for his engines, and he’d always been willing to stand up for Edward, or Thomas, or Percy – but at the same time… at the same time, it was clear he’d been far stricter than his son.

Maybe that was a good thing – the railway wouldn’t have survived the Great Depression without a firm hand to guide it. The entire railway had teetered on the edge of bankruptcy for so long, and he’d become so afraid of losing it all. He’d held on tight, almost strangling everyone as he nitpicked his way through every issue. He’d been harsh – harsher than he should have been.

Henry looked so much happier without him around.

But he’d done it for the railway! Being firm, strict and a little controlling was what the railway needed to see in each new year. He’d never scrapped one of his engines (the board, however…), even when they were unable to be really useful. Again, Henry was a testament to how much he hated to see potential wasted.

He’d fought against the LMS for years over the right to keep the railway open… but the LMS fell, and still the NWR remained. It… felt good to know he’d been so successful… even if most of the engines didn’t remember him so favourably.

With one last breath, he slipped away from Edward’s train, taking a moment to wander into his son’s office. He spotted a very familiar top hat resting on the coatrack. “That’s… my hat…” murmured Sir Topham, feeling just a little better.

Everything was going to be just fine.

With that, the almost ethereal figure standing in the Fat Controller’s office faded away.

Back to Master Post

[nauticalsonneteer]

Camellia station squabble v.6

I am pleased to whomever enjoyed my former tangent about my ongoing writing with Camellia station. It makes a writer elated to share his works to the world!

Camellia railway station was a real station located in Sydney Australia; Upon seeing a station that took after the name, I'd appraise it as a wonderous setting for my story! Being the appropriated location, but research is due to look into it. I refuse to jump into planning, as it may settle as my impending faulter if I hastily choose with little to no hesitation. I must keep upholding my wit.

The setting of time is what most importantly grapples my intrigue. Being officially open to public boarding in 1885 and my setting in the 1930s, alas! This may be adequate. Foremost, a debacle plagues me. The lack of information that is provided on the actual station itself! I'll take to the books more closely to enlighten myself. Eye key components!

[guerrerense]

Locomotive #5199 approaching Carrog station por Welsh Photographs Por Flickr: The Llangollen Railway is a volunteer-run heritage railway in Denbighshire, North Wales, which operates between Llangollen and Corwen. The standard gauge line, which is 10 miles long, runs on part of the former Ruabon – Barmouth GWR route that closed in 1965.

[colonellickburger]

Mark Pinder. Burnt-out Mini stuck down the steps of the former Scotswood railway station, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1990

[spc-rambles]

And now, a random head canon on one of Danville's landmarks, because I found myself making some up for the sake of fun world building.

Cliffside Park, seen mostly in HNG but also in P&F’s ‘We Call It Maze’ is the Tri-State Area’s national park, which includes a selection of log cabins. There’s three dotted around the park and they’re very expensive. Lucky that one of them was built by Betty Jo and Clyde when they were 20.

All other sights seen in ‘The Ballad of Badbeard’ among other episodes they appeared in make up the geography of the park. This includes a heritage railway that takes you up along the mountain range where its terminus is at a plain where white tailed deer and red and grey fox live. A fifteen minute drive from Betty Jo and Clyde's log cabin and the campsite.

The other end of the line is the central Tri-State station ‘Danville Central’, as seen when Hamster and Gretel were juggling wagons and such, where the heritage line connects with the main railroad network as well as Danville’s subway network.

Two of five locomotives working the line have been seen on Dwampyverse shows. The former is a well tank, water tanks below its boiler. Funny how the smaller one is pulling coaches for more passengers than the big tender engine has. Just an observation.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Floods unite Brazilians in solidarity despite political rift

At a former railway station in Rio de Janeiro, a fast-growing mountain of food, bottled water and clothes donated to Brazil's thousands of flood victims testify to a rare unity of purpose in a country marred by deep political enmity.

In solidarity with residents of the water-ravaged southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazilians from around the country have been sending money and goods, volunteering at shelters and soup kitchens, and caring for pets left behind in the chaos.

"What is happening is extremely sad, it is devastating," Natalia Maria Montenegro Cardoso sighed as she unloaded about twenty packs of bottled water from the boot of her small car at the train station -- now the headquarters of the Citizen Action NGO -- in Rio's Gamboa neighborhood.

The scale of the tragedy, which has claimed some 150 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, has united a country that was deeply polarized by recent political events -- even to the point of violence.

Schools and government institutions, private companies, political groups, athletes, artists and ordinary citizens have mobilized en masse to help the destitute.

The result has been the biggest donation drive in the country's history, according to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose government has sent military and other aid and vowed some $10 billion for reconstruction.

But it is the mobilization of civil society that has perhaps been the most inspiring.

Continue reading.

[leftistfeminista]

Women victims of the dictatorship imprisoned in the National Stadium: Get to know the exclusive names of 405 women detained in the main sports arena in 1973

After Hatch 8, the door of the National Stadium through which political prisoners were taken to the interior of the detention camp, was officially opened last week, details became known about where the 1,200 women prisoners taken by the military to the real concentration camp that was the stadium were held. Just like the ones the Nazis made. Our own local Auschwitz with Prussian helmets and clothing watching over defenseless women.According to unofficial figures, around twenty thousand people, including men, women, children and foreigners, passed through the facilities of the now derelict National Stadium, the country's main sports field.

Hatch 8 had remained closed since April of this year, due to the work of recovering and enhancing the engravings and marks left on its walls - messages, calendars, dates, phrases in English, initials, etc. - which were made by the former prisoners, with keys, wires, glass and other items found in the hatch itself and its surroundings.

The female prisoners

For Wally Kunstmann, President of the National Living Memory Stadium Corporation, "there are around 1,200 women who were imprisoned here."There are almost no television images of the prisoners and very few photographs of them.Initially, after the Coup, about 100 women were imprisoned in the same coliseum, in its dressing rooms or hatches. 

: Military guarding the National Stadium:

Then, all the women were taken to the locker room next to the pool at the National Stadium, almost on the corner of Pedro de Valdivia and Grecia, a few meters from the Metropolitan Railway station. There they were stripped of their belongings and many of them were abused by psychopaths from the Chilean Army. The dressing room that is still intact is about 30 meters long by 7 meters wide and was where the prisoners, several of them pregnant, slept and relieved themselves. Many of them were subjected to sexual violence, an issue that is not revealed by the former detainees. In this dressing room, copper plaques were installed a few weeks ago with the names of some prisoners from Chile and abroad who were detained in that place.

[scotianostra]

On October 15th 1902 Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel opened its doors for the first time.

Look out for my own connections to this grand old hotel, both in a personal sense and through my home town of Loanhead.

Back then it was called The North British and in Edinburgh a lot of people, myself included, still refer to it by the initials NB.

On Wednesday 15 October, 1902, on the front page of The Scotsman newspaper, a small advert appeared: “North British Station Hotel. This hotel in direct communication with Waverley Station is now open F.T. Burcher, hotel manager.”

According to the hotel’s official history, the North British was “a vanguard for the railway company which built it, a surrogate for the grand station they had never been permitted to erect in the sensitive site between Old and New Town.” The architecture, executed in golden sandstone, features towers and balconies galore. It’s a glorious mash-up of influences from across northern Europe. Expensive to build as well as to run – it gobbled upwards of 200 tons of coal every month – the hotel was seen as a “sign of the future heralded by the railways, the newly opened Forth Bridge and the electric lights switched on in Princes Street just seven years earlier”.

Nevertheless, some believed the Caledonian, which opened a year later, boasted the more advantageous location. And some detractors found the sheer size of the hotel gauche, complaining “it is coarse and obstructive at once”.

The hotel – working name “Waverley Station Hotel” – was the brainchild of George Wieland, a former NBR company secretary who retired to its board in 1890. Having toured some of the most lavish hotels in the world – where he realised the importance of having a banqueting hall to bring in business – he hired W Hamilton Beattie to draw up plans for Edinburgh. The hotel would have 300 bedrooms, 52 bathrooms, and 70 lavatories, and was designed to encourage the circulation of fresh air. Lifts shot people straight from the station into the hotel’s foyer, and beyond that, to rooms furnished with mahogany, leather and crimson moquette. It’s said that the bill for plants and flowers exceeded the bill for gas, and there was even a special machine to burnish the silver. Weiland made sure the new hotel’s cellars were full of the finest champagnes, hocks, ports, and whisky, the better to entice his ideal customers – wealthy, landed families moving between their multiple residences.

In 1922, the hotel became part of the London and North Eastern Railway Company and by all accounts the hotel sparkled from top to bottom, but after the Second World War, when the railways were nationalised, and Prestwick airport began getting transatlantic traffic, things began a slow downward trajectory. Even so, the hotel remained the destination for Edinburgh society events, be they corporate or personal. In 1983, British Rail sold off its rather faded North British Hotel. In 1988, it closed for refurbishment, it was in dire need of this, some of the rooms were looking a wee bit shabby, the wooden window frames unable to open fully, and how do I know this? Well I used to be the window cleaner in the hotel and the windows that didn't open meant I had to find one close by and edge along the crumbling sandstone ledges, the worst affected, and highest were on the south of the hotel and there was a six storey drop down to the train station below.

At the start of the 1990s, Balmoral International Hotels, an Edinburgh based company, bought the venue. In 1997, the Balmoral became the first hotel bought by Sir Rocco Forte as he assembled his portfolio of hotels. It currently boasts Scotland’s only Bollinger Bar, as well as the Michelin-starred Number One restaurant run by executive chef Jeff Bland, a spa, and ten function rooms accommodating up to 450 people.

Famous guests over the years have included Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Palin, Beyoncé and JK Rowling, who finished the last Harry Potter novel here, on 11 January, 2007, and then daubed her signature on a bust in her room.

A second wee link with the hotel, is Charles Forte, Grandfather of the present owner began his working life in my home town of Loanhead when he moved to Scotland from Italy.